Guild Wars 2

Mod jon_peters: the one after that will be fairly sizable balance wise

Mod khalija_: If you have feedback or suggestions for future tournaments, you can email us at tournament@guildwarsguru.net

Mod jon_peters: This is a big game

Mod jon_peters: as you can see

Mod jon_peters: lots of things interact

Mod jon_peters: so 1

Mod jon_peters: 1) we dont rush because testing is hard

Mod jon_peters: 2) we dont rush because balance should be slow moving

Mod jon_peters: or you just keep overshooting your target

Mod khalija_: Sent you a msg Karl!

Mod khalija_: Pm’d you on Twitch

Mod jon_peters: I will say the late june patch is a fairly sizable balance patch

Mod jon_peters: as Karl can attest to

Mod jon_peters: the fx will be replaced with lower detail versions first

Mod jon_peters: but I will say lot of trait diversity incoming for late June

Mod jon_peters: trying to improve many bad traits

Mod jon_peters: to bring up new builds

Mod jon_peters: hmm example….

Mod jon_peters: should I give an example…

Mod jon_peters: Karl do you have a good example of a trait change?

Mod jon_peters: some merging going on

Mod chaplan_: back

Mod jon_peters: yeah

Mod jon_peters: chap

Mod jon_peters: Chap you mind if Karl and I spoiler some of the trait changes incoming?

Mod chaplan_: I thought about doing in SOTG…but played it safe.

Mod chaplan_: I did mention Necro burning.

Mod jon_peters: We can give away like 1 or 2 I think

Mod jon_peters: ok

Mod jon_peters: I think Ele air is a good spoiler…

Mod jon_peters: I will say this

Mod jon_peters: every single trait line is seeing at least 1 change

Mod jon_peters: some I think are getting as many as five changes

Mod khalija_: official site says we’ll get some new info on June 4th

Mod chaplan_: Overall idea: look at bad/unused traits and improve them, or just rework them.

So is “late june patch” next week’s?

It’s possible to have 2 patchs this month.

where is this from?

Livestream chat during the Guild Wars 2 Guru’s Master of the Mists tPvP Tournament

Nah, balancing is always in the “big” update at the end of the month. Beginning of middle of the month is just small update for events/living story …
They never put major balances in those small updates.

Calling it now. This is just a setup to nerf zephyrs boon and get rid of easy perma fury/swiftness for d/d. Can’t wait to hear them claim how awesome the new traits will be. I hope I am proven wrong though.

More than anything I just want to be freed from 20+ points in arcane. Anything less than 20 arcane feels wrong and plays like crap. IMO rework the bonus.

Thats just awesome. Thanks for sharing^^ I hope they remove the obligatory 30 arcana, and into some lesser extent 30 in water. What i mean by obligatory is that these traits are just too good to have compared to the others.
Next to traits I also hope they do something about the attunement cooldown so you don’t have to put 30 in arcana as well.

Liquid Swords.1740:

Calling it now. This is just a setup to nerf zephyrs boon and get rid of easy perma fury/swiftness for d/d. Can’t wait to hear them claim how awesome the new traits will be. I hope I am proven wrong though.

Why do you need Zephyr’s Boon for perma swiftness?

Glyph of Harmony + Any other Swiftness source does it for me.

PinCushion.7390:

Liquid Swords.1740:

Calling it now. This is just a setup to nerf zephyrs boon and get rid of easy perma fury/swiftness for d/d. Can’t wait to hear them claim how awesome the new traits will be. I hope I am proven wrong though.

Why do you need Zephyr’s Boon for perma swiftness?

Glyph of Harmony + Any other Swiftness source does it for me.

Obviously the more important boon there is perma Fury but thx for pointing out how easy swiftness is to get.

Liquid Swords.1740:

PinCushion.7390:

Liquid Swords.1740:

Calling it now. This is just a setup to nerf zephyrs boon and get rid of easy perma fury/swiftness for d/d. Can’t wait to hear them claim how awesome the new traits will be. I hope I am proven wrong though.

Why do you need Zephyr’s Boon for perma swiftness?

Glyph of Harmony + Any other Swiftness source does it for me.

Obviously the more important boon there is perma Fury but thx for pointing out how easy swiftness is to get.

Because putting your heal on CD for swiftness seems like the worst idea ever. Having to burn your best defensive weapon powers (frost/shock aura) for swiftness is bad enough. Add to that, the glyph is easily the weakest heal we have since the genius behind ANet balance crapped all over cleansing water with glyph heal and inscription.

I don’t think they will touch Zephyr’s boon. Is it a good trait absolutely it is, but its not imbalanced by any stretch. Several classes have traits that are considered must haves. 5 points in illusions for mesmers, 15 points in discipline for warriors jump to mind. Also I know a few ele’s don’t run that trait anymore and run the 20 in earth for geomancer’s freedom. I tried 20 earth not my style but some people like it.

Its a good trait but I wouldn’t put it on the level of a 20% cooldown reduction on all illusion summoning skills like a mesmer or 5 second weapon swap for a warrior.

I don’t think Blasting Staff needs to be tweaked, but I wouldn’t complain if it also made Area of Effects from sta kitten last longer in addition to making them bigger.

I don’t think they’ll change (or nerf) Zephyr’s Boon, but rather they’re gonna improve some useless/underpowered air trait
examples: One with Air and Grounded (this could actually be fine if it worked with updraft)

Shar.3402:

I don’t think they’ll change (or nerf) Zephyr’s Boon, but rather they’re gonna improve some useless/underpowered air trait
examples: One with Air and Grounded (this could actually be fine if it worked with updraft)

I’m pretty sure these will be the type of changes we see. Changes that will at the very least “tempt” us to try otherwise ignored traits.

I wouldn’t mind seeing them redo some of the movement speed traits (minor and major) as they’re really unnecessary IMO

Shar.3402:

I don’t think they’ll change (or nerf) Zephyr’s Boon, but rather they’re gonna improve some useless/underpowered air trait
examples: One with Air and Grounded (this could actually be fine if it worked with updraft)

Yea I don’t see myself not taking that trait but I would drop 10 points from water for something juicy in fire. If fire gets really good trait reworks then I would definitely consider dropping zephyr.

I’m not too sure they won’t touch Zephyr’s Boon. I’d love to to be optimistic, but for some reason I have that gut feeling they won’t really touch the useless traits and instead rework our popular traits to bring them all down to the same level of suck.

Caffynated.5713:

Liquid Swords.1740:

PinCushion.7390:

Liquid Swords.1740:

Calling it now. This is just a setup to nerf zephyrs boon and get rid of easy perma fury/swiftness for d/d. Can’t wait to hear them claim how awesome the new traits will be. I hope I am proven wrong though.

Why do you need Zephyr’s Boon for perma swiftness?

Glyph of Harmony + Any other Swiftness source does it for me.

Obviously the more important boon there is perma Fury but thx for pointing out how easy swiftness is to get.

Because putting your heal on CD for swiftness seems like the worst idea ever. Having to burn your best defensive weapon powers (frost/shock aura) for swiftness is bad enough. Add to that, the glyph is easily the weakest heal we have since the genius behind ANet balance crapped all over cleansing water with glyph heal and inscription.

No when your Healskill has a short c, 15-20 seconds its the best idea!
1) 33% to run away or get faster to fights
2) you don’t need to use runes and you can choose a better ulitie.

Liquid Swords.1740:

Calling it now. This is just a setup to nerf zephyrs boon and get rid of easy perma fury/swiftness for d/d. Can’t wait to hear them claim how awesome the new traits will be. I hope I am proven wrong though.

Makes sense, (sarcastic laugh) nerf the class into oblivion and make all d/d builds pointless. Zephyr’s boon is fine as it is.

We sacrifice a ton of damage and crit just to be able to have some level of survivability due to such low base hp/toughness. Zephyrs gives us a few seconds of increased crit and speed, sorely needed when you’re almost forced into a survivable build just to compensate with game fav mesmers/warriors.

STOP trying to fix what isn’t broken; fix the skills that are pointless/useless, not the things actually use that are not overpowered.

It would be nice to see trait changes that provide a means for breaking stun and or give stability without cantrips. So tired of using same utility bar.

T K.5173:

It would be nice to see trait changes that provide a means for breaking stun and or give stability without cantrips. So tired of using same utility bar.

I just stopped running them, and started using range and situational awareness to avoid getting hit.

It’s gotten mixed results, but I’m really starting to like Lava Tomb!

Tornado needs to enable faster.
Most summon weapons are useless to most people. Lose those and buff glyphs, which could be so much better than they are now.
Have elementals last until they die.
The entire fire trait line is worthless unless you’re a glass staff ele.
I would love to be able to play a signet ele, but I can’t because there’d be no chance to get away from any CC when water is down. And most of the procs on signets are single target except for air.
Get rid of backwards ride-the-lightning’s when you still have a target, but aren’t facing them.
The beam tech in air one for sceptre is way worse than it was after the beam tech patch first hit. To be good with sceptre you need high crit chance, but then you have less mobility, so it needs to do more damage imo. It is a lot of fun to play in zerkers, but not in anything else. Water and Fire 2 miss too much. Put vulnerability on water 1, and chill on water 2.

Ele air? How about making the whole of scepter more attractive as a weapon option and conjured weapons.

As for the comment about not overshooting thats rather ironic considering their balance changes almost always overshoot, I’d far rather more incremental changes than they give us.

MandJ.8965:

No when your Healskill has a short c, 15-20 seconds its the best idea!
1) 33% to run away or get faster to fights
2) you don’t need to use runes and you can choose a better ulitie.

Glyph has a 25 second cooldown. That’s several lifetimes in the burst happy GW2 meta. Getting to the fight faster and then instadying because you can’t heal is a bad plan.

Caffynated.5713:

MandJ.8965:

No when your Healskill has a short c, 15-20 seconds its the best idea!
1) 33% to run away or get faster to fights
2) you don’t need to use runes and you can choose a better ulitie.

Glyph has a 25 second cooldown. That’s several lifetimes in the burst happy GW2 meta. Getting to the fight faster and then instadying because you can’t heal is a bad plan.

It usually takes me more than 25 seconds to get from one place to another. I stack Swiftness from multiple sources before I head from one place to another. My cooldowns are nearly always back up by the time I get where I’m going.

PinCushion.7390:

It usually takes me more than 25 seconds to get from one place to another. I stack Swiftness from multiple sources before I head from one place to another. My cooldowns are nearly always back up by the time I get where I’m going.

I think that both strategies are entirely valid, and it shows that aspect is pretty well balanced that this conversation is even being had! I personally prefer the aura just b/c i am scarred from too many thief instagibs, so I am very careful to have my important cooldowns up at almost all times. However, I do like the swiftness in a glyph build.

The only tradeoff really comes when running. The aura swiftness has no issues with popping auras for the speed and defense at the same time. The heal skill usually is needed when its needed, so can’t always wait for air or a needed heal to turn the jets on.

Liquid Swords.1740:

Calling it now. This is just a setup to nerf zephyrs boon and get rid of easy perma fury/swiftness for d/d. Can’t wait to hear them claim how awesome the new traits will be. I hope I am proven wrong though.

Nerf the addon stuff not zephyrs (aka a MAX crit % that zephys can’t go over if you already have a certain amount of crit, same goes for swiftness). This prevents the “abuse” if you call it that but still allows players to that enjoy the d/d build to continue enjoying it. I only use it in my d/d for that few second 20% increase in crit, get rid of that and you get rid of most of my crit ability in d/d as I run a 0/10/0/30/30 for boon, cantrip. Hopefully their “rebalance” doesn’t mean kitten existing builds into oblivion making the fun of d/d go away. A current build above is fun to play, its versatile, and puts out consistant damage but not heavy into dps.

Rhoto.8791:

Shar.3402:

I don’t think they’ll change (or nerf) Zephyr’s Boon, but rather they’re gonna improve some useless/underpowered air trait
examples: One with Air and Grounded (this could actually be fine if it worked with updraft)

I’m pretty sure these will be the type of changes we see. Changes that will at the very least “tempt” us to try otherwise ignored traits.

I hope you’re right, current bunker style builds are fun, but with recent nerfs they’re no longer impossible to kill. IMO, balanced survivability, with support, boons for group and some damage (which in its entirely avoids the holy trinity in this game and proves this game can exist without it).

Liquid Swords.1740:

Calling it now. This is just a setup to nerf zephyrs boon and get rid of easy perma fury/swiftness for d/d. Can’t wait to hear them claim how awesome the new traits will be. I hope I am proven wrong though.

I agree.

Well we can only wait and see unless a dev feels up to giving us a heads up on what to expect?
[insert dev comment here]
Otherwise, I can only hope they don’t “break” it and make my entire build (0/10/0/30/30) with matching well planned gear pointless. Otherwise it was a complete waste of time and energy.

Easiest way to NOT destroy zephyrs, PUT a cap on the bonus, simple as that. If your swiftness or crit percentage is currently X (such as 60%) it would become a lesser amount of a bonus added versus the full time/percentage otherwise. Have it scale based on what you use. If they remove the fury it kills my already kitten damage potential due to having to sacrifice damage for survivability.

Swiftness, as I said, limit that and fury to a certain bonus/amount of time, times it can trigger in X amount of time, but for sakes don’t remove it; most of it use it as intended, so if you remove it/change it significantly, you’d be destroying what people have come to enjoy playing as ele, all the while only solving a tiny problem.

I love how everybody is in terror for upcoming changes after the last balancing patch !!
I get its very hard to imagine that patches will bring anything other than game changing nerfs but..
Zephyrs boon is not even used in tpvp anymore cause d/d is overshadowd by s/d.Also it affcects 2 skills max on d/d besides combos and is definately not over the top.A good fury and swiftness uptime didnt hurt anybody and isnt that hard to achieve on a lot of classes.
Not to mention that moving this trait up and you destroy all aura share builds including those with the fire trait.
Dont think ele has to fear the nerf hammer for now..
They already gave like the worst possible nerf to rtl,nerfed auras,healing etc..It comes to a point where you cant nerf anymore.It makes you look stupid afterall

If its a whole trait revamp, spreading stun breaker out of crantrip, making water line less damage and more support, bringing a solution to intelligence supremacy, removing idiotic casting time on signets, making conjured weapons worth a crap… Sure.

If its just slight nerfs targeting the wrong builds like we had since release I dont think its worth the time.

kostbabis.8791:

I love how everybody is in terror for upcoming changes after the last balancing patch !!
I get its very hard to imagine that patches will bring anything other than game changing nerfs but..
Zephyrs boon is not even used in tpvp anymore cause d/d is overshadowd by s/d.Also it affcects 2 skills max on d/d besides combos and is definately not over the top.A good fury and swiftness uptime didnt hurt anybody and isnt that hard to achieve on a lot of classes.
Not to mention that moving this trait up and you destroy all aura share builds including those with the fire trait.
Dont think ele has to fear the nerf hammer for now..
They already gave like the worst possible nerf to rtl,nerfed auras,healing etc..It comes to a point where you cant nerf anymore.It makes you look stupid afterall

What you say is true: it wouldn’t be reasonable to nerf zephyrs boon right now. That’s why I’m afraid that it WILL be nerfed. The devs have shown complete incompetence with elementalist balancing, so don’t hope for even the slightest buff. Or even staying the same.
You know Arenanet screwed up when a warrior has far more mobility than an ele…

People are in fear because “balancing” means nerfing anything that is viable. Rather than solving why something may appear overpowered, they nerf it into oblivion to try to “control” what styles people play and how they will play it. For instance, the complete bunker build months ago which was difficult to kill unless you said “hey lets put on conditions and stuns, vuala made them easy to kill” but instead they nerfed it a great deal.

My expectation is they’ll nerf things and make current builds less viable (even if they aren’t overpowered) rather than fixing the traits that are useless/pointless, and skills that are pointless as elementalist. As history has proven, they nerf things into oblivion based on the minority of peoples opinions versus the majority.

My hope is they fix the useless traits, and ones they find “overpowered” they cap at a percentage specific buff total (such as preventing perma fury/perma swiftness with 60% uptime or 75% uptime or w.e cap) rather than hard-code changing the skills to make them pointless, and destroying current builds (like the 0/10/0/30/30) which is a ton of fun to play.

Looking at their ‘balancing’ history it’s quite understandable elementalists live in fear and terror whenever a new ‘balance’ patch comes around.

Seems like the big problem we have is that dagger weapon, both main and off-hand and especially when dual wielding those things. Devs seem to have identified the Elementalist’s dagger as a weapon they generally don’t like (well, ok, let’s be honest: they kittenin hate it). They probably won’t stop whacking away at us with their nerf bats until people finally stop using daggers on Elementalists.

makku.2508:

Looking at their ‘balancing’ history it’s quite understandable elementalists live in fear and terror whenever a new ‘balance’ patch comes around.

Seems like the big problem we have is that dagger weapon, both main and off-hand and especially when dual wielding those things. Devs seem to have identified the Elementalist’s dagger as a weapon they generally don’t like (well, ok, let’s be honest: they kittenin hate it). They probably won’t stop whacking away at us with their nerf bats until people finally stop using daggers on Elementalists.

Then we can all be super awesome staff eles!

there is nothing left to nerf in daggers, both MH and OH -.-

If they nerf zephyrs boon it’d make the build much less viable. Why don’t they just put a “soft cap” with diminishing returns on fury/swiftness rather than nuke that skill. One can only hope they get it right this time.

I’m not too optimistic after the last few patches that have made us weaker and havent even bothered to fix our useless abilities. Their idea of balance is instead of making our crappy abilities decent and more appealing to promote build diversity, they make our few decent and neccesary abilities suck just as much as the useless ones. i think we’re going to end up with NO useful abilities after this next patch since everything will end up sucking equally. That is how they balance us. Time to dust off my boring warrior or thief since those 2 classes will inevitably get even more ridiculous and unneccesary buffs as the only class i still actually enjoy playing as continues getting nerfed into oblivion.

Lol @ the negative posts. If you check any other profession forum, you’ll see that any other negative nancy has the same thing to say about their favourite class. “Anet doesn’t likes my class. They’re going to nerf the good skills without bothering to fix the bad skills. I’m going to change my class!”

I don’t think anet hates daggers, considering that daggers have gotten the most love out of all our weapons since the game was released. First, the aoe buffs to its air skills. Second, the overall mh daggers buff (#2 water with stronger healing, #2 earth with cripple, etc). Third with the excellent change to magnetic grasp. Forth, with the armor boost for frost aura. Fifth, with the recent functionality improvement for lightning whip. Six, with the upcomming weakness buff. Daggers have been getting the most love out of anet, and outside of them, only focus skills have been getting buffed (only recently, and only slightly so far).

Also, I don’t recall out best abilities being nerfed to a crappy state. Mist Form and Rtl are still very strong and widely useful.

I don’t understand why so many people think Zephyr’s Boon would be nerfed. Elementalist aren’t the only class that can get perma fury phantasmal fury on mesmer is a 10 point trait it refreshes over and over again. Perma fury is good it isn’t broken.

@oZii.2864 I think its’ because the proven track record is nerf, nerf, nerf elementalist stuff and not fix the actual issue with bad traits and lackluster traitlines, rather they put temporary duct tape on a big gaping wound.

DarkSider.1079:

@oZii.2864 I think its’ because the proven track record is nerf, nerf, nerf elementalist stuff and not fix the actual issue with bad traits and lackluster traitlines, rather they put temporary duct tape on a big gaping wound.

I know that their are some nerfs that have happened that don’t make sense. Like blinding befuddlement for mesmers. My ele hit 80 after the RTL nerf so I guess I can’t say much on how it use to feel to play elementalist before some of the nerfs. So I do understand some fear in regards to your favorite class. Ele is my newest 80 been on it about a month and a half now and it is my favorite of all the other professions I have played. I gave him my thiefs incinerator after just 3 weeks.

I can’t really see anything that would be nerfed just from my playing in this time I do hope they buff the other trait lines though. Fire magic is attractive to me for some reason.

@oZii.2864 I hope you’re right, and things get “improved” rather than nerfed, again.

but I will say lot of trait diversity incoming for late June
trying to improve many bad traits
to bring up new builds
hmm example….
should I give an example…
Karl do you have a good example of a trait change?
some merging going on
back
yeah
chap
Chap you mind if Karl and I spoiler some of the trait changes incoming?
I thought about doing in SOTG…but played it safe.
I did mention Necro burning.
We can give away like 1 or 2 I think
ok
I think Ele air is a good spoiler…
I will say this
every single trait line is seeing at least 1 change
some I think are getting as many as five changes
Official site says we’ll get some new info on June 4th
Overall idea: look at bad/unused traits and improve them, or just rework them.

Is the sky always falling with many of you? I read nerf nowhere in the conversation!

They want to make sceptor and focus more viable. At the moment DnD is still the king in wvw.

Do not worry, no incoming nerfs, just incoming buffs.

I hope so, I left the game due to staff last year, I came back when I heard from a friend how viable d/d was..and the lure for my elementalist truly hooked me back into the game.

So where’s the “new info on june 4” from the OP ?

Equality.9023:

but I will say lot of trait diversity incoming for late June
trying to improve many bad traits
to bring up new builds
hmm example….
should I give an example…
Karl do you have a good example of a trait change?
some merging going on
back
yeah
chap
Chap you mind if Karl and I spoiler some of the trait changes incoming?
I thought about doing in SOTG…but played it safe.
I did mention Necro burning.
We can give away like 1 or 2 I think
ok
I think Ele air is a good spoiler…
I will say this
every single trait line is seeing at least 1 change
some I think are getting as many as five changes
Official site says we’ll get some new info on June 4th
Overall idea: look at bad/unused traits and improve them, or just rework them.

Is the sky always falling with many of you? I read nerf nowhere in the conversation!

read my signature…
Do you still trust anet word?