Guild Wars 2

As a staff elementalist I have never killed anyone in a 1v1 encounter in WvW. On the other hand I have been facerolled by warriors using hundred blades or thieves with back stab. By the time the warrior is rendered on my screen I’m usually dead getting hit for 4-7k damage. I’m baffled by the “you shouldn’t aoe people rezzing the downed”. That is literally my only chance for a kill.

In a zerg vs. zerg encounter in WvW warriors/thieves are always calling out in vent how many bags they got. I find it unbelievable knowing that I get a few. Maybe I need to learn to play staff. Meteor shower seldom hits anyone. ANY aoe damage needs to knock thieves out of stealth and the ticks on aoe need to be more frequent if I’m ever going to hit them.

Kaleden.9386:

Their statements definitely made me raise an eyebrow, but their intention seemed to be that they don’t want players defaulting to using AoE abilities against single players when single target attacks are available.

What was said, exactly? I apparently missed this.

When does everyone think changes will be made? I am waiting to get my ele in case it gets nerfed into the ground lol.

Thanks,

Zoug

People in here are pathetic.

Maybe you should ask yourselves: what is it exactly that makes me mad, dissapointed and so pathetic? Is it A-net telling me that they are going to look at a few AoE-skills? Or is it perhaps because im investing too much time playing games and need to get a real life?

Please take a deep breath. You know NOTHING about what A-net is going to do. They probably don’t even know themselves yet.

But sure, A-net only exists to make your life miserable.

You give ANet way too little credit. What did they say in the live stream? Whenever they nerf… They bring something else up in line. So if your AOE gets nerfed they will probably retool your abilities to give you more single target DPS.

Knox.3748:

Areann.1304:

I hope they see One Hundred Blades as an aoe, so much damage on an eight seconds cooldown

Are u serious? Because u dont even need to dodge HB.. Just one step back and he missed.

Same thing can be said about most of Ele’s skill my friend. And the Dmg/CD is nowhere near 100 blades. I know 100B is hard to land and I don’t think it need an adjustment. But same go for Ele’s skill. Actually they need to vamp some of the staff skill. Who care about AoE when the delay and dmg are surprisingly bad

They will nerf our AoE, while they will keep looking past the warriors and guardians that just run around 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 killing stuff in a cone infront of them.

Matt Witter.6982:

There are a few different knobs we can turn in regards to AoE some of the bigger ones being:
Radius of the AoE
Frequency of the AoE Damage
Damage of the AoE
Max Targets of the AoE

Currently, some players causing the AoE are able to do more damage to one person while also controlling a portion of the field, compared to a player with single target damage.
In our balance discussions we always look at what these changes could do to PvE as well as PvP. Any changes we make will undergo a lot of testing, both internal and by our trusted alpha team. It is important to understand that we are not doing a blanket nerf to all AE’s or a dramatic adjustment of the damage AoE’s can do.

There may be some cases where players can build for AoE damage, but are just not viable or other cases where AoE is clearly the dominate way to build, and as such the other builds get left on the side lines. Its these classes/builds that we are concerned about.

Basically..

Stop Overreacting, and lets think of the AoE’s we have that will ACTUALLY need a nerf.

Like Frostbow 4?

I hope this nerf won’t mess with PVE so much. My biggest scare is how this AoE nerf will effect PVE for elementalists. There’s already a sort of stigma towards taking eles into encounters just because we’re eles.

Well if they nerf aoe hard for ele’s maybe they will give us weapon swap to make up for it.

Wishful thinking I know, but I would take it!

I have been a staff ele for months, and I’m interested to see what changes are on the horizon.

Solori.6025:

Matt Witter.6982:

There are a few different knobs we can turn in regards to AoE some of the bigger ones being:
Radius of the AoE
Frequency of the AoE Damage
Damage of the AoE
Max Targets of the AoE

Currently, some players causing the AoE are able to do more damage to one person while also controlling a portion of the field, compared to a player with single target damage.
In our balance discussions we always look at what these changes could do to PvE as well as PvP. Any changes we make will undergo a lot of testing, both internal and by our trusted alpha team. It is important to understand that we are not doing a blanket nerf to all AE’s or a dramatic adjustment of the damage AoE’s can do.

There may be some cases where players can build for AoE damage, but are just not viable or other cases where AoE is clearly the dominate way to build, and as such the other builds get left on the side lines. Its these classes/builds that we are concerned about.

Basically..

Stop Overreacting, and lets think of the AoE’s we have that will ACTUALLY need a nerf.

Like Frostbow 4?

Basically let’s nerf the only thing which makes frost bow worth taking?…sounds smart

Solaxo.7409:

Well if they nerf aoe hard for ele’s maybe they will give us weapon swap to make up for it.

Wishful thinking I know, but I would take it!

I have been a staff ele for months, and I’m interested to see what changes are on the horizon.

That would be awful. More is less.

Some skills still need more quality. Not least on the elementalist.
Too many skills look alike, and conjure skills and glyphs are just bad design made for kids. “Yiihhaaa, im so cool with my giant burning sword in my hand”, useless. No synergy and it adds nothing to builds, except maybe a little bit “MOA DAMAGE” (boring).

And why would it be better to have 45 skills available. There are so many other games that have gone that rout. Thats one of the things A-net does right. Aiming for quality. Although they are not there yet.

honestly as an engineer main i would have to say that ele’s probably do have a lot to be worried about in this patch. there is no guarantee whatsoever that if they nerf your AOE that they will buff you in any regard in other area’s.

personally i’ve learned to fear patch notes. but on the other hand, the patch hasn’t even come in yet, so there is no telling what they will do, and they won’t tell you before hand. so all you can do is wait, and even if ele’s are going to be nerfed severely worrying about it won’t help either.

@Jonathan Sharp

No prob. Some classes have a ton of AOE, while others don’t have as much. So we’re not just going to do a blanket nerf to all AOE – that’s not fair to all classes. We’ll go on a class by class, weapon by weapon basis.

And as I’ve said, we may need to tone something down in one area of the game, but it may be totally fine in another area.

For some weapon sets, the AOE options may be too strong compared to the single target options, which is what we aim to address.

This message left around 3 days ago should calm people a bit, the developers are well aware of the fact that 90% of our skills are AoE and we’re not gonna receive a flat out nerf on everything.

Though I really don’t see how it will possible to fight the likes of thieves and mesmers with aoe dmg nerfed overall, it takea already “forever” to destroy clones/illusion which can have 2k+ HP(phantasm build) and some thieves builds which allows them to stealth non-stop making any ele single target skill completely useless

jobah.7241:

People in here are pathetic.

Maybe you should ask yourselves: what is it exactly that makes me mad, dissapointed and so pathetic? Is it A-net telling me that they are going to look at a few AoE-skills? Or is it perhaps because im investing too much time playing games and need to get a real life?

Please take a deep breath. You know NOTHING about what A-net is going to do. They probably don’t even know themselves yet.

But sure, A-net only exists to make your life miserable.

You may want to rethink your post. “Pathetic” would be throwing out childish taunts and insults.

Grow up.

Wreckdum.8367:

You give ANet way too little credit. What did they say in the live stream? Whenever they nerf… They bring something else up in line. So if your AOE gets nerfed they will probably retool your abilities to give you more single target DPS.

You give them way too much credit.

What did they “bring up” when they neutered Evasive Arcana?
What did they “bring up” when they nerfed the damage on grenade kit by 30%?

ANet has long since taken all of the good will people had for them, wadded it up, set it on fire and thrown it off a cliff.

Nerfing AoE (not just on the ele), shows a clear disconnect in how the game plays and how the devs see things. Their disconnect with reality is doubled down when they talk about AoEing downed players as a problem. If a bunch of horribles want to run up and try to revive people under heavy AoE , that is a massive L2P issue, not a game balance issue. Use a rez signet like a halfway intelligent person. Push enemies back or suppress them with counter fire before you attempt to revive.

It’s not just their conclusion that is terrible, it’s the incredibly ignorant and nonsensical logic that they use to validated it. ANet has shown repeatedly that they don’t understand how to balance the game. When they come out and say that they plan to make a shockingly bad gameplay adjustment like this, everyone should be up in arms. They’re clearly not going to reach a good decision on their own.

Knox.3748:

Areann.1304:

I hope they see One Hundred Blades as an aoe, so much damage on an eight seconds cooldown

Are u serious? Because u dont even need to dodge HB.. Just one step back and he missed.

cool …
Unluckily you are not a mob…..
Mobs do not evade 1Hb

Agree on bad “balancing” history of anet also.

We have tons of examples..
Look at eng, look to staff ele, look what they did with cliffside or arah.

But the problems is when they find problems where there isn t any like this time….

I really want to hear from them WHERE they saw AoE as an issue in dungeons or PvE.

Caffynated.5713:

You give them way too much credit.

What did they “bring up” when they neutered Evasive Arcana?
What did they “bring up” when they nerfed the damage on grenade kit by 30%?

ANet has long since taken all of the good will people had for them, wadded it up, set it on fire and thrown it off a cliff.

Nerfing AoE (not just on the ele), shows a clear disconnect in how the game plays and how the devs see things. Their disconnect with reality is doubled down when they talk about AoEing downed players as a problem. If a bunch of horribles want to run up and try to revive people under heavy AoE , that is a massive L2P issue, not a game balance issue. Use a rez signet like a halfway intelligent person. Push enemies back or suppress them with counter fire before you attempt to revive.

It’s not just their conclusion that is terrible, it’s the incredibly ignorant and nonsensical logic that they use to validated it. ANet has shown repeatedly that they don’t understand how to balance the game. When they come out and say that they plan to make a shockingly bad gameplay adjustment like this, everyone should be up in arms. They’re clearly not going to reach a good decision on their own.

I agree with you.

To me, it looks like ANet prefer simple brawl as a fight – a punch exchange. If you land AoE – it is unfair to punch exchange and we intended game to be punch exchange. Maybe next step is removal.. oops sorry I mend nerf of dodge?

If those people go blindly into AoE it is serious L2P issue (I can’t believe I am typing L2P). Even when I go in PvE I put some of my protective utilities to rez someone not to mention it would be advisable in PvP always to do so. Besides, protection is good. But no, people want all their offensive utilities slotted and march like Lancelot into AoE death claiming heroic victory.

My question is – did any of these plea to ANet not to go down hill had any effect on ANet? Ever?

Matt Witter.6982:

There may be some cases where players can build for AoE damage, but are just not viable

meaning, we’ll get a buff

Matt Witter.6982:

other cases where AoE is clearly the dominate way to build, and as such the other builds get left on the side lines. Its these classes/builds that we are concerned about.*

since it’s our only way to play it’s also our dominate way … what now Anet?

how could they even nerf AoE in general?

just compare ele staff 2 with warrior 2h-sword 2:
- both spells have nearly same CD
- warrior doing 10-20k+ per target; ele doing 3? ~1500-hits per target dealing about 5k dmg in total per target
- warrior with haste deploys this load of damage within about 1-2 seconds while the ele-spell doesn’t even do any damage before 1-2 seconds when it’s already on the ground → can be easily avoided thus usually will do max. 1 tick of damage (one could also choose to just keep standing in it, since its damage is so low)
- only advantage of ele-spell is that it can be cast at 1200 range (but what’s the use of this, if it doesn’t do any dmg)

how is this fair? (and please spare me with your “ele got 20 spells”-argument)

Gorni.1764:

since it’s our only way to play it’s also our dominate way … what now Anet?

how could they even nerf AoE in general?

just compare ele staff 2 with warrior 2h-sword 2:
- both spells have nearly same CD
- warrior doing 10-20k+ per target; ele doing 3? ~1500-hits per target dealing about 5k dmg in total per target
- warrior with haste deploys this load of damage within about 1-2 seconds while the ele-spell doesn’t even do any damage before 1-2 seconds when it’s already on the ground -> can be easily avoided thus usually will do max. 1 tick of damage (one could also choose to just keep standing in it, since its damage is so low)
- only advantage of ele-spell is that it can be cast at 1200 range (but what’s the use of this, if it doesn’t do any dmg)

how is this fair? (and please spare me with your “ele got 20 spells”-argument)

Ye it is fair in multiple levels. They ruin some profession or something that is important to certain group of players so those players leave. Player base drops, reducing the lag so new players purchase the game with reduced lag in comparison to what would be if all those players stayed in game. So it is fair new player get same or less amount of lag and Arena Net don’t worry too much to expand servers.

After some time can propose expansion with some new profession or weapon that will get attention of players and raise popularity, nerf it and story repeats. Also, this expansion is billable so it is fair again Arena net earns money.

Who cares about AoE?

Caffynated.5713:

jobah.7241:

People in here are pathetic.

Maybe you should ask yourselves: what is it exactly that makes me mad, dissapointed and so pathetic? Is it A-net telling me that they are going to look at a few AoE-skills? Or is it perhaps because im investing too much time playing games and need to get a real life?

Please take a deep breath. You know NOTHING about what A-net is going to do. They probably don’t even know themselves yet.

But sure, A-net only exists to make your life miserable.

You may want to rethink your post. “Pathetic” would be throwing out childish taunts and insults.

Grow up.

[…]

ANet has long since taken all of the good will people had for them, wadded it up, set it on fire and thrown it off a cliff.

Exactly, that seems to be a pretty “pathetic” statement.

Caffynated.5713:

jobah.7241:

People in here are pathetic.

Maybe you should ask yourselves: what is it exactly that makes me mad, dissapointed and so pathetic? Is it A-net telling me that they are going to look at a few AoE-skills? Or is it perhaps because im investing too much time playing games and need to get a real life?

Please take a deep breath. You know NOTHING about what A-net is going to do. They probably don’t even know themselves yet.

But sure, A-net only exists to make your life miserable.

You may want to rethink your post. “Pathetic” would be throwing out childish taunts and insults.

Grow up.

Wreckdum.8367:

You give ANet way too little credit. What did they say in the live stream? Whenever they nerf… They bring something else up in line. So if your AOE gets nerfed they will probably retool your abilities to give you more single target DPS.

You give them way too much credit.

What did they “bring up” when they neutered Evasive Arcana?
What did they “bring up” when they nerfed the damage on grenade kit by 30%?

ANet has long since taken all of the good will people had for them, wadded it up, set it on fire and thrown it off a cliff.

Nerfing AoE (not just on the ele), shows a clear disconnect in how the game plays and how the devs see things. Their disconnect with reality is doubled down when they talk about AoEing downed players as a problem. If a bunch of horribles want to run up and try to revive people under heavy AoE , that is a massive L2P issue, not a game balance issue. Use a rez signet like a halfway intelligent person. Push enemies back or suppress them with counter fire before you attempt to revive.

It’s not just their conclusion that is terrible, it’s the incredibly ignorant and nonsensical logic that they use to validated it. ANet has shown repeatedly that they don’t understand how to balance the game. When they come out and say that they plan to make a shockingly bad gameplay adjustment like this, everyone should be up in arms. They’re clearly not going to reach a good decision on their own.

I have absolutely nothing to add to this reply. I’m only replying so I can quote it… It’s so good it deserves to be in this thread multiple times….

This entire issue should scare everyone. If they cater to the lowest denominator (as they’ve done more than once already) and nerf because too many people cry instead of handling balance properly (ACTUALLY balance things and tell whiners to grow a pair) then the game will be forever lowered to “something to do when you’re bored” instead of a main-game…

Zanaraxtarus.3954:

…. then the game will be forever lowered to “something to do when you’re bored” instead of a main-game…

Oh the irony… I kinda feel like that… I might try single target build I dig at YouTube but I doubt party members will be fond of me and my ele as they used to be.

As a D/D ele, I’m not too worried about this upcoming nerf.

What could they really do to us? Make the Ring of Fire or Churning Earth circles smaller? Whatever, that’s fine. I only use RoF for stacking might anyways and I can still use Lighting Flash for Churning Earth bombs.

I’m just terrified of the day they start picking apart the synergy of our Water and Arcane traits. That will be the day ele’s reach engineer status :/

Well there goes my motivation for making The Bifrost.

The post about MS being OP is obviously a kittenolol… for reasons that any eles here would know so ignore that post.

We won’t find out what exactly is going to happen to ele AoEs until the patch actually takes place. The changes made to class mechanics in GW2 seem to lack balance though. The slight boost in certain skills prior to or in conjunction with downgrades on other abilities, isn’t significant enough for players to feel “the balance”. It’s going to be interesting to see how ANet handles other issues at hand, specifically ones pertaining to the game economy, such as inflated prices on certain items (legendary precursors) due to bots. The patch notes at this point bring fear and anxiety, rather than an excitement and a motivation to play, to a lot of people playing the game. Cheers to the person that posted about disconnection between developers and the players and how it leads to an undesirable modifications to classes and game mechanics. ANet could invest in hiring more employees to establish a wide and profound medium between the company and users so that any changes ANet brings to the game is more acceptable to both parties.

jobah.7241:

People in here are pathetic.

Maybe you should ask yourselves: what is it exactly that makes me mad, dissapointed and so pathetic? Is it A-net telling me that they are going to look at a few AoE-skills? Or is it perhaps because im investing too much time playing games and need to get a real life?

Please take a deep breath. You know NOTHING about what A-net is going to do. They probably don’t even know themselves yet.

But sure, A-net only exists to make your life miserable.

You saw what they did to Evasive Arcana. We’re just trying to make sure they won’t make the same mistake again.

What you should also consider is that many peopl love to play the staff, even if it’s clumsy for actual 1v1 fighting. Since AoE is pretty much all the staff has going for it atm, taking that way would be a disaster. And that’s said to people who already feel (somewhat justly) the staff’s burden of not being able to keep up with other weapons both on eles and other professions. They get outranged by rangers, out dpssed and out aoed by warriors, and outbuffed by guardians. Taking away AoE leaves us with nothing.

Personally, I don’t really mind losing AoE but I would like to see some compensation or other. Turning the staff in something similar to the longbow, with AoE area skills and single target burst skills, would certainly go well with me.

It’s not a weird thing to have concerns about things. Also, it’s not a bad thing to point out potential problems. If Anet has already adressed them, fine. If they hadn’t thought of it yet, they may be able to alter things before the patch comes out. But giving no feedback doesn’t make anyone happy, and doesn’t benefit the game either.

Alilinke.7690:

TheGuy.3568:

Alilinke.7690:

ATMAvatar.5749:

Also keep in mind that none of the balance team plays an ele.

Link? Or is this sarcasm. I find that hard to believe tbh.

Who knows if that is true now but yes months ago the listed the classes they played ele wasn’t one of them. Go back to the EA nerf for more info.

I don’t know much about the balance team, but one would assume they play all classes equally. >.>

Not really. The balance team is still made up of people who have their favorite classes too. Its also not something we made up they disclosed that information freely. Its not like their going to play each class 2 hours a day until they get it. Or each and every build for that matter. Simply put its unrealistic. They likely look at skills and traits see how they work cross build and see if they can implement “balance”. But who knows maybe they toss darts.

Remember what happens when you assume anything.

i dont even need to read the QQ and other things, because this first page is kind of summing it up.. all i can say is this. Anet pls pull ur heads out of ur @s* stop taking FAILED IDEAS from War crap, and pls go back to doing what made this game great, and took you 5 years to build…… cause if they are screwing things up this early in the game, then gw2 will be dead before it ever gets to its full size and content.
i say this on the ele forums cause i am a ele. but it seems not only this class is getting issues

They never said anything about eles aoe only .If you look at the class descritption they have posted eles are supposed to have great aoes compared to other classes.Also almost all our damaging skills in most weaponsets are aoe like d/d.
And keep in mind aoe is also warriors gs attacks,necro wells,engies nades and bombs,mesmers shatter etc etc.
In short dont expect a direct nerf to damage but most likely a change on how many targets some abilities can hit etc.
Relax!!

I just posted another thread asking about this, but then I saw this one (sorry, not on the forums much). I personally am very concerned about what this will do to PvE, since I only do PvE and dungeons with a staff Ele as my main. It seems that all the nerf talk is based on PvP, but as many people pointed out earlier, that is a unbelievably STUPID thing to do! The only thing that makes Eles good in PvE is their AoE skills, and I’m tired of people complaining that something is OP in PvP and so that class has to be ruined in the main game. We’re already seeing a trend towards all warrior/guardian groups for dungeons, and unless they plan on giving Eles a SERIOUS health/toughness AND damage buff to make up for losing AoE effectiveness, that class (like engineer before it) is going to die

Llyr.8763:

I’m baffled by the “you shouldn’t aoe people rezzing the downed”. That is literally my only chance for a kill.

That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. The first thing you should do when someone is downed is drop lava font on them, maybe even static field when someone goes to rez them.

What idiot told you that?

[/quote]
I really want to hear from them WHERE they saw AoE as an issue in dungeons or PvE.[/quote]

Burrows in AC. They’re nerfing the whole game because of Frost Bow 4 for AC Burrows j/k

Nerf All the AoE !!!

I just hope they dont ruin the d/d ele style of play, it’s the only one I really like for tpvp. Attunement dancing and always having a button to press besides auto attack by rotating cooldowns makes for a very fast paced twich gameplay where you can do so much in such a short amount of time.