Guild Wars 2

I can understand reducing its visual effects slightly, but this is ridiculous. It honestly needs to get fixed.

I don’t even use staff. Ele’s an alt for me. You’d think this wouldn’t be very important to me.

You’d be dead wrong. As someone who should be happiest about this visual clutter reduction, I can tell you I am NOT happy. At all.

Give Eles their boom back.

The problem wasn’t the fireball as it was flying, that was fine. The problem with fireball was the explosion graphic and the fact that it was too pronounced. Once again, the wrong element of the visual clutter is addressed…

I also miss the old effect. It really felt like an accurate representation of the impact the spell delivered. Now it just looks like a pebble on fire.

Agreed, new effect looks really horrible >_<
Hope Anet will bring back the old one…

i don’t think i’ve complained on the forums before, but this is disgusting indeed.

i actually thought my graphics drivers are acting up, i also noticed that the air overload graphics was cut down, there used to be a cloud above the character’s head that moves around with u as long as it’s channeled, now it’s just sparks.

really really disgusting.

the main auto attack to be visually nerfed to make the class feel like a baby gun shooter rather than a powerful mage.

epic fail indeed.

Sooo… Apparently they gave the same treatment to the FGS auto attack too. Spitballs all around.

Srsly Anet…..fireball now looks like the pea shooters I used to use as a 5 year old…only the peas are burning…terrible change….pls, pls, pls revert…that is all.

Anet please fix this disastrous attempt to “fix” clutter. Ruins our mad style

Can SOMEONE from Anet PLEASE weigh in on this?! I would feel better if one of you just said: “we did it on purpose deal with it”. But they refuse to admit if it’s a mistake (which god I hope it is) or anything.

I don’t normally take to the forums, but as others have said, this looks aesthetically awful. Flinging little hot pebbles at people doesn’t only look bad, but it feels bad as an Elementalist, and a big part of any game (particularly one with a progression system) is making the player feel powerful and effective.

Personally, I never found visual clutter from elementalists to be an issue, particularly when you’ve got people running around with enormous rainbow swords, and Guardians spraying light all over the place. I understand why visual clutter might need to be reduced, and I know Arenanet wants to improve the PvP scene, but this seems like not only the wrong target but entirely the wrong way to attempt to fix it.

I’d still like to see this adjusted a little bit. I don’t mind having the effect toned down, but it would be nice to have something a little larger than a pebble.

I feel like I need to bump this. I went back to staff today after a long time… And fireball just looks SO STUPID!

ANET, that was by far the most stupid thing you’ve ever done. Delete or block my post if you want… But know that everyone here agrees with me.

You cannot just nerf graphics for everybody just because a handful of people have weak PCs.

I agree! I want my old fireballs back! The effects should be reduced on contact not while en route to target. They look soo bad right now.

I really, really hate this change. My fireballs look like firedots instead. This change is awful! Please revert this change.

So they will change an animation unnecessarily, but they won’t change the sound on the dreamer?

omg i played my ele for the first time in a while and im like why do some of the animations look to limited. its not just the fireball 1 but the dodge trait in arcane has almost no animation i dont even know i triggered it or not

Wow, this really sucks. The particle FX and animations are a huge reason I play this game. Until this is fixed, I’m going to have to shelve my Elementalist. If it isn’t ever fixed and continues…I will not continue playing GW2.

This is really sad…

can we get the normal animations back now please? there are already 5 threads on this issue, alot of the skills just look plain stupid now. ele fireball is the biggest let down so far. A toggle to switch between the normal animation and the reduced clutter animations would fix this issue for everyone! Also would like to add that the new guardian elite trap animation is actually a problem in pvp because you cant see it after the initial ‘snap’ animation. so it seems as though there is nothing there but you keep getting knocked back. a pretty big issue considering the traps are already insanely powerful.

anet is just fail, they cant do anything right, every update they poop out is a downgrade, it’s funny how stupid they are.

Played a lot of reaper lately, saw this thread and logged onto my ele to see myself.

What the hell were they thinking? Seriously, Anet is either completely stupid or their organization is so chaotic and amateurish that they don’t realize what the hell they are doing. Everyone who enjoyed playing staff ele before the patch now has to witness this huge turnoff the entire time. Besides, fireball never was the problem. It was the stationary effects that scaled up with boss size.

i stopped playing staff ele since this stupid patch, which is saying something because ele is my main, been playing it since launch and i have 4 ele. I wont be touching it until they fix the kitten animations. Add a toggle for the people who find the animations distracting or for those whose machines cant handle it. I have a pretty beastly rig, so im not worried about fps drops and so on. FIX IT!!!!

I can’t believe a 3 pages long thread with 123 replies wasn’t enough to draw out an answer from a dev.

Don’t worry, guys. We’ll probably get our effects back with the next elite spec.

x.x

i am thinking we got animation nerf to make room for rev since rev skills are so animated

Agree. Please REVERT this change. Fireball is totally laughable now. I thought it was something wrong with my graphics at first. The spell looks like a tiny, flaming pebble now. WHAT WERE YOU THINKING??? You’ve taken a huge part of the enjoyment of playing an elementalist away.

Daharahj.1325:

I can’t believe a 3 pages long thread with 123 replies wasn’t enough to draw out an answer from a dev.

Also a thread in general discussion that’s at 257, no response their either. Just gotta keep their heads in the sand and wait for it to blow over.

All these comments made me log onto my ele and yes the fireball is indeed a peanut, to the extreme lol. It reminds me of when i first tried my juggernaut legendary on the Warrior, it lacks real meaty weight like any other true hammer.

I logged on my ele, just now and i went trough all the attacks to check for myself.

The new fireball is indeed disgustingly weak looking, however it’s not limited to that.
They did decrease the size of lavafont , eruption (really small now), shatterstone (scepter) Churning earth (woefully unimpressive now) and swirhling winds.
And one of my favorite attacks, lightning surge, it used to shoot lightning, now it doesn’t do that anymore…the target just takes damage… I really really really hate these changes

I chose Elementalist to use visually stunning and impressive attacks, not this weak looking garbage

As usual, ANet can’t find the middle ground.

Have you already seen new aura effects? I have two questions here:

1. Anet, why are you breaking your game instead of improving it?

2. Why did you add particle effect slider in graphical options if you are going to dumb down the particle effects in default?

Why r u guys doing this…..? As if the fireballs isnt enough

This is complete BS and it has to stop. Destroying the visuals that make this game fun to play is destroying the game. It’s like the new management is working for the competitors and trying to drive players away.

This hurts… I’m going to take a break from gw2 and play dying light for a while (I just bought it). When I get back, I hope things will have improved somewhat.

They sacrificed the ele’s animation and made the Legendary Long Bow/SB and the Flameseeker’s animation better…. Nice logic ANET

Meanwhile at anet…:

Dev guy: People pretty much universally hate the changes we’re making to spell effects
Boss guy: kitten ’em. Ignore the complaints like we always do and keep ruining things!

I see that there were more visual nerfs in the latest patch and Anet is still not responding to the growing amount of discontent regarding this topic. Fireball is still a mess and now auras are almost invisible. I’m not into the whole e-sports thing but I can’t imagine invisible shocking and magnetic auras being a good thing for competitive players either. The only visual changes that didn’t butcher the animations were the shout ones. They still look okay to me but I’d need a side by side comparison to be sure.

Whatever the case, I’m baffled that Anet hasn’t yet considered making these changes optional. Guild Wars 2 is a game where visual appearance and animations matter a lot and every time you interfere with the visuals the negative response becomes greater. You can see this in the general discussion section and in reddit, which has a thread about it with almost 500 upvotes already, which is more than twice as many as the reddit fireball thread that came with the previous patch. My point is that the players are getting sick and tired of this and that it will become a very major issue soon if a compromise is not found.

Ganathar.4956:

I see that there were more visual nerfs in the latest patch and Anet is still not responding to the growing amount of discontent regarding this topic. Fireball is still a mess and now auras are almost invisible. I’m not into the whole e-sports thing but I can’t imagine invisible shocking and magnetic auras being a good thing for competitive players either. The only visual changes that didn’t butcher the animations were the shout ones. They still look okay to me but I’d need a side by side comparison to be sure.

Whatever the case, I’m baffled that Anet hasn’t yet considered making these changes optional. Guild Wars 2 is a game where visual appearance and animations matter a lot and every time you interfere with the visuals the negative response becomes greater. You can see this in the general discussion section and in reddit, which has a thread about it with almost 500 upvotes already, which is more than twice as many as the reddit fireball thread that came with the previous patch. My point is that the players are getting sick and tired of this and that it will become a very major issue soon if a compromise is not found.

If they’d do what every other MMO out there already does, and give us a slider option for the effects, then problem solved.

Really atrocious what they did to Fireball.

I remember when I first made my Ele when GW2 launched. I found a Staff, and pressed 1.

Watching the Fireball actually form around my hand, growing in size, and then EXPLODING on impact was so incredibly satisfying.

The flashy attacks were, and are, a BIG reason why I made Ele my main.

Did the Fireball nerf really fix anything? The fire that makes bosses invisible in PvE is mainly due to Guardian skills and the Burning visual effect.

It looks so pathetic now! Like, what even am I hurling around? Spitballs?

And now they destroyed Auras too. They are LESS visible than before. Good luck with counterpley when you’re not sure if the Ele you’re about to attack has Shocking Aura or Magnetic Aura up.

I hate to compare to Guardian because I don’t want to turn any of Anet’s visual noise wrath towards them. Nobody deserves what they’re doing to the game. You’re right about the sexy visuals being a HUGE part of the draw for this game. It’s a game that has prided itself on looking stunning, in the landscape, the character models, and the spells visuals. It’s unfathomable how they can think that killing that and ticking everybody off is a good idea for the future of this game.

The Reddit community finally managed to pry a response from Colin.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3v24hg/the_reduced_visual_noise_changes_have_to_stop_gw2/cxk2o2z

That’s ridiculous, I have no interesting in e-sport, why should I be affected by e-sports?

Even e-sport will have some problem with these “visual noise”, that still shouldn’t effect other who have no interesting in that.

Why not just split for two option? One for those who want to play e-sport, and one for those who don’t.

I want Fireball and Auras back.

zideeffectzz.6379:

They sacrificed the ele’s animation and made the Legendary Long Bow/SB and the Flameseeker’s animation better…. Nice logic ANET

can someone enlighten me in what way did they improve the flameseeker’s animation?

Dusted off my ele alt yesterday… What a shock that fireball was… It’s like hand-throwing yellow paint balls.

Hope you folks get it back, there’s plenty of over-the-top FX that i wish i could disable at times, but never since beta stress tests did i ever think “my, i wish these fireballs were smaller”.

cafard.8953:

Hope you folks get it back, there’s plenty of over-the-top FX that i wish i could disable at times, but never since beta stress tests did i ever think “my, i wish these fireballs were smaller”.

None of us did, Cafard. We all want our big, flaming balls back.

nacario.9417:

zideeffectzz.6379:

They sacrificed the ele’s animation and made the Legendary Long Bow/SB and the Flameseeker’s animation better…. Nice logic ANET

can someone enlighten me in what way did they improve the flameseeker’s animation?

They added footstep effects and an ambient glow that leaves a trail of New Krytan letters.

Yep, it looks like GW1 Flare with it’s Aftercast effect now.

Restore the Fireball back to it’s glory, also the Eruption must be restored, it’s like a small fart bubble popping out of sand, than a destructive eruption…

Instead of making effect reductions via patches, make a Graphics options instead, more viable solution than permanent graphical nerfs!

Add options that are good for ESports, if this was done in favor of it, why the heck make permanent uncontrollable changes, when you could have added GRAPHICS OPTIONS!!!

We have a “Effect LOD” in Graphics Options, BUT IT DOESN’T EVEN WORK! (I’ve been using it in the past and visual clutter was always the same with no changes) WTF ANet!!?!?

let’s hype alacrity and guardian’s blue flames!

FrostSpectre.4198:

Yep, it looks like GW1 Flare with it’s Aftercast effect now.

Restore the Fireball back to it’s glory, also the Eruption must be restored, it’s like a small fart bubble popping out of sand, than a destructive eruption…

Instead of making effect reductions via patches, make a Graphics options instead, more viable solution than permanent graphical nerfs!

Add options that are good for ESports, if this was done in favor of it, why the heck make permanent uncontrollable changes, when you could have added GRAPHICS OPTIONS!!!

We have a “Effect LOD” in Graphics Options, BUT IT DOESN’T EVEN WORK! (I’ve been using it in the past and visual clutter was always the same with no changes) WTF ANet!!?!?

I believe anet is trying to match animations with damage output as much as they can…

This change literally made me quit the game. Call me extremist I don’t care, I can’t even look at it, this class just doesn’t feel the same.

Let me know when they change it back.