Guild Wars 2

Hey guys I’ve compiled a list of weapon skills/utilities and my perspective on each of them. I feel it is important to note while I do play with all weapon sets at times I do mainly play with D/D as I love the play style to death and as such I will only be commenting on that weapon set.I’ll leave the commentary of the other weapons to those who are far more experienced than my self.

Dagger/Dagger

Fire

Dragon’s Claw: Great skill at point blank, but being so close to an enemy is so counter productive, its not allowing to me to take advantage of the fact that the skill has 400 range. I think the area that each line can hit in needs to be expanded. Otherwise I feel that it is a fantastic skill.

Drake’s Breath: No complaints.

Blazing Speed: It needs to be fixed, When experiencing high ping the travel distance is reduced and AoE blast is released towards the start of the animation rather than the end.This is a big one simply to keep similarity between spvp-wvw. In spvp I use it to get into people faces. Then in WvW where I experience higher latency I use it as a way to move away from my opponent while still applying damage to them. Both uses are fantastic but it would be nice if it functioned the same way all the time.

Ring of Fire: No complaints.

Fire Grab: Still not reliable especially when experiencing high ping.The margin by which you hit or miss is very small and for players like my self who experience larger pings you not only need to worry about the player dodging it but you need to ensure you’re positioning is immaculate.

Water:

Vapor Blade: Other than the 600 range it just doesn’t feel like its worth using. Damage is insignificant and the vulnerability only lasts for 5 seconds. Would like to see the vulnerability duration increased possibly to 10-12 seconds. I feel that this would make it’s use much more significant.

Cone of Cold: No complaints.

Frozen Burst: No complaints.

Frost Aura: No complaints.

Cleansing Wave: No Complaints.

Air

Lightning Whip: No complaints.

Lightning Touch: No complaints.

Shocking Aura: No complaints.

Ride the Lightning: When you’re experiencing high latency the skill is incredibly hard to hit unless used at point blank which which often causes the skill to go on the full 40 second cool down. Which ruins the whole concept of using it as a gap closer. Which then in turn locks players into the use of certain utilities to make up for this. Other than that I think the skill is fine and every change to it was well deserved.

Updraft: Like Ride the Lightning this skill can be really hard to hit when experiencing high latency. Other than that the skill is perfect.

Earth

Impale: No complaints.

Ring of Earth: While this is a minor thing. If the projectile block is intended it is very hard to use as the window of time is so small. Maybe this needs to be looked at, possibly giving a buff to block projectiles for 1 seconds or something to that effect could make it more reliable and user friendly.

Magnetic Grasp: Projectile is too slow, because of this you cannot reliably use it as the snare/leap combo it was intended to be. It more often than not is used close to the target to keep them out of your face.

Magnetic Leap: After cast is too long. 99% of the time it is far more beneficial to immobilize and move in normally.

Earthquake: No complaints.

Churning Earth: This is the big one for me. Its great to open a fight or use when you have cover but once a fight has started its very difficult to use, becomes in my opinion obsolete which is counter intuitive to the blast finisher attached to it and requires you more often than not to take particular utilities to make use of it. I would like to see it usable while moving, have the cast time reduced to 1 second and have the direct damage reduced by half. I feel that this would give D/D eles a reliable/fast way of stacking high amounts of bleed which is all too important while engaging people at melee range.

Utilities:

Healing Skills: I think our healing skills on the whole are all fantastic options with their own flavor and realistically don’t need to see anything done to them.

Cantrips: I feel that the changes done to cantrips has been fair and inline. Previously cantrips essentially offered you the ability to do most things, break stuns, clear condis, ensure stomps, damage immunity. While triple cantrip is still my preferred utility set up I now need to choose what I would rather have and build accordingly.

Lightning Flash: I like it in its current form. Don’t hate me but I think the nerf was required. Triple cantrip had the ability to do a lot while countering everything. However that being said I think the cool down is a little too much for a class that requires lots of mobility to function optimally I feel that 30-35 would be fair while still ensuring its not spammable.

Cleansing Fire: No complaints, the nerf was fair.

Mist Form: No complaints.

Armor of Earth: This is a great utility I now use it over Mist Form so I can continue to apply pressure to my enemy through stuns/knock downs or use it to stomp people. However the cool down is just too long. I feel that 60 seconds would be more appropriate.

Arcane: I dont have much to say about arcane. I think the lack of a stunbreak was the main thing that was missing from arcane. Otherwise I think the obvious focus on being offensive is represented well.

Arcane Wave: No complaints.

Arcane Blast: No complaints.

Arcane Shield: No complaints. I think adding the stun break was the major change the skill needed to be truely viable.

Arcane Power: No complaints.

Glyphs: Glyphs I feel are great. They encourage pre planning. However I have very limited expirence with them. So my complaints are only minor.

Glyph of Elemental Power: Fantastic skill now that it has a stunbreak, however the amount of weakness that can be applied with it is just too powerful. Through good positioning I can keep weakness up on multiple targets with great uptime which is just too powerful. It’s just way too much and can be used to such a high degree by skilled players.

Glyph of Storms: No complaints.

Glyph of Lesser Elementals: No complaints.

Glyph of Renewal: The cast time it flat out too long. I think 1.5 seconds would be a fair cast time. Currently its usability is very low just because of the sheer amount of time that is required to cast it.

Signets: I don’t have a whole heap of experience with signets other than a little testing so I wont have a whole heap to say.

Signet of Fire: Nice amount of burning damage, could be great in a condi build but since we don’t see many if any condi Ele’s it’s hard to say.

Signet of Water: No complaints.

Signet of Air: Fantastic utility now thakittens a stun break. Having said this though I feel like if you have no target it needs to be an AoE blind around you. While I’m not sure if this is possible it would be a much needed change.

Signet of Earth: No complaints.

Conjures: I have close to no experience with conjures simply because I feel there is something that is severely lacking in the whole concept so at this point I have nothing to say about them individually. I think that to make them truly viable the charges need to be removed from them, you need to be able to drop and re equip them within the 1 minute that they are able to be used for and finally they need to be instant casts.

Elites:

Glyphs of Elementals: Great love it to bits, no complaints.

Conjure Fiery Greatsword: Other than the glaringly obvious faults with conjures on the whole no complaints.

Tornado: Very situational how ever is still a worthy skill. No complaints.

I agree with all of your latency issues. I live in Australia 300ms if I’m lucky. When Anet were asked about Oceanic Servers I believe their response was something along the lines of, we have asked people from Aus and they say there is very little affect of lag on the game. Not to mention that it is so hard (costly) to setup any kind of servers here lol.

I stopped using /D due too Flame grab, Lightning Touch and RTL not doing as intended. People complian about RTL being 1500 pre patch. It would take you to about 1500, then rubber band you back to 900-1200. Now it takes you to 1200, to rubber band you back to 600-900

TGSlasher.1458:

I agree with all of your latency issues. I live in Australia 300ms if I’m lucky. When Anet were asked about Oceanic Servers I believe their response was something along the lines of, we have asked people from Aus and they say there is very little affect of lag on the game. Not to mention that it is so hard (costly) to setup any kind of servers here lol.

I stopped using /D due too Flame grab, Lightning Touch and RTL not doing as intended. People complian about RTL being 1500 pre patch. It would take you to about 1500, then rubber band you back to 900-1200. Now it takes you to 1200, to rubber band you back to 600-900

Yeah I am in the same boat as you I originally mained a Guardian but swapped because melee was just too painful at least with D/D I can still enjoy the melee play style due to the extra range rather than getting spammed with miss.

Welcome on board.. I want an Oceanian server