Guild Wars 2

If this is true…. whiners will be whining OP OP OP until the next nerf….. NO. I would rather be weak like a cat than get a boost only to be nerf in the next patch…. which is POINTLESS……. Then why bother boosting some of the skills in the first place? NO POINT. POINTLESS…..
Because Arenanet only needs one whiner to whine all day and there goes your build…..

I really like the changes, finally gotta be a kitten glass cannon with S/D, 0-30-0-10-30, yeah!

Bad changes (for WvW and PvE):
Signet of Air: This skill is now a stun breaker. Cooldown increased to 30s.
Still useless as a combat skill. It’s not worth to have it at all.
Cleansing Fire: This skill is no longer a stun breaker. Decreased recharge to 40s.
Without stun break this skill is useless.
Glyph of Elemental Power: This skill is now a stun breaker.
Still useless as a combat skill.
Chain Lightning: Reduced the aftercast by .1 seconds.
Still useless – this needs a rework, not a tweak.
Tornado: Cooldown reduced to 150 seconds.
Still very situational skill.
Arcane Lightning: This trait now grants a non-stacking 10% bonus critical damage for 15 seconds after using an arcane utility skill.
Useless.
Tempest Defense: Internal cooldown reduced from 90 seconds to 60 seconds. Damage to stunned and knocked down enemies is increased by 20%.
Still useless.
New grandmaster trait – Fresh Air: Critical strikes will now recharge Air Attunement. This effect can only occur once every 5 seconds.
This is the stupidest thing I can imagine. Air Staff is still UP in PvE and very situational in WvW. They want us to run a high Crit D/D? D/D needs to be a bunker or he dies.
New grandmaster trait – Diamond Skin: 10% of your total toughness is converted into condition damage.
Useless.
Good changes:
Gust: This skill now passes through enemies striking multiple foes in a line.
Meteor Shower: Reduced the cast time from 4.2 seconds to 3.8 seconds.
Phoenix: Doubled the velocity. Added an unblockable skill fact.
Windborne Dagger: Movement speed in combat is increased by 15% for the main-hand, 10% for the off-hand, with 25% total for both.
They really want us to play D/D…
Stone Splinters: Moved to Adept. This trait now deals 5% bonus damage to bleeding opponents and increases outgoing bleeding duration by 20%.
The rest of these “changes” will not change anything.

well i m glad, staff ele s got their cast times reduced and the delay for the dmg to hit is shortened. I still wont play it because it s a awfull weapon for any serious pvp er.
My build is nerfed once again, loose 2 stunbreakers, and a dmg reduced by 5-7%.
Nothing interesting for any utility or elite skill.

The things i was hoping the most were not introduced. improving the hitbox of firegrab and making anything usefull of dragon tooth. it stays an absolutely useless spell, that you re beeter off without using. All the scepter dmg will still come from swaping into air and Phoenix ( the only realy postiv thing i see for myself in this patch)
autoattack dmg has not been upgraded so we still hit like a lvl 15 warrior.

biggest disapointment, no positiv changes to the fire line, specially the useless passiv ones. no improvement of any kind to condition builds, while mesmer get boosted even more with theirs.

I ll probably go for scepter/d burst and try out the new master trait and die a 100 horribel deaths to thiefs and mesmers.

nothing new: Anet invents the strangest solutions nobody was asking for.

I miss the flamestrike delay fix.

Thaia.5146:

A nice bunchload of crapola

Besides,

- Frech Air is a good move toward the right direction. Next step is to change Intelligence and to have Fresh “Element” in every trait line.

- Nerfing Bountyfull Boons is a good move… if it was compensated by a support buff (Increasing heal/buff range would be the best path).

- Nothing on conjured weapons indicates Anet actually consider they are cosmetic toys.

- We’ll see on the long run if Staff buff does make a diference. I would have liked a real instent heavy damage spell somewhere (fromtload damage Lava Font, instent Ice Spike or triggered Eruption).

- I wouldnt have hit so kitten Cleansing Fire.

- Glyph of Elemtal Powers as stun breaker isnt maybe the best play since you pretty much want to use it on cooldown to have the maximum uptime.

Nikkinella.8254:

They should have given eles the anti movement condition instead of thieves. Would make staff ele a hell of alot better. Right now it’s still a free kill. That would atleast make it somewhat of a threat. Giving it to thieves was the stupidest idea ever. Standing still against a thief is suicide. now moving away from their stupidly OP burst damage will get you killed too thanks to a new condition. great job once again at balancing things Anet. And why still no reduction in our attunement recharge rate? we still have to spec into arcane because of that.

I agree. My head wants to explode trying to figure out why they would give it to Thief. Has to be one of the most baffling balance changes I’ve seen in an MMO to date. The rest of the patch looks pretty good to me, this is the stand out “what the heck are they thinking” part of the patch notes.

Raven.9603:

can you just pretend im really stupid (i know, hard) and give me more than 2 words?
fresh air is not doing anything about the cooldowns for the actual weapon skills. yes, you can get more Electric Discharges to fire, but what is the point if the skills in air are all still going to be on cooldown?

I would imagine the power of Fresh Air is to dump a couple air skills, swap to a second attunement, do your business, swap to a third attunement, fling a skill or two and then instantly jump back to air. As you say, its not going to be for going from air to something else and then directly back to air.

Or just plain be doing non-air stuff as your primary rotation and yet always be able to jump to Air even moments after a swap if you need it.

Its kinda moving your wallet from your back pocket to the front – so you can reach for it faster. If you’ve already got it out, of course that not gonna be a big advantage .

Skills
Signet of Air: This skill is now a stun breaker. Cooldown increased to 30s. = Might be good.
Lightning Flash: This skill is no longer a stun breaker. Damage increased by 50%. Cooldown reduced to 40s. = Rage at first, but not sure if needed since we have other stun breakers. Damage increase? LOL. CD is good, especially with more reduction in water.
Cleansing Fire: This skill is no longer a stun breaker. Decreased recharge to 40s. = There’s a chance that cleansing will remove the CC anyway.
Glyph of Elemental Power: This skill is now a stun breaker. = Barely ever used this. Now we’re forced to use it?
Gust: This skill now passes through enemies striking multiple foes in a line. = Good. Now if only it will knockback like it’s supposed to and never does.
Windborne speed: Reduced aftercast by .2 seconds. = So 29.8s? lol Why does this matter at all when you can get the extra speed from Glyph of Ele Harmony?
Chain Lightning: Reduced the aftercast by .1 seconds. = This could end up being amazing depending on stacks. Like instant until stopped? I likey.
Static Field: Reduced the aftercast by .3 seconds. = This will also be amazing. This is the best spell we have in staff for pvp.

Earth
Eruption: Reduced the cast time of this skill from 1.8s to 1.2s. = Good. Switching to Earth has always felt slow and clunky.
Unsteady Ground: Increased duration from 9s to 10s. = Good.
Shockwave: Reduced the aftercast by .3 seconds. = Might end up trying to use this more often now since it is an immobilize.
Lava Font: Reduced the cast time from .36 seconds to .2 seconds. Reduced the aftercast from .34 seconds to .2 seconds. = Huge finisher of downed targets, and wall AoEs. Very nice.
Meteor Shower: Reduced the cast time from 4.2 seconds to 3.8 seconds. = Best news so far.

Water
Geyser: Reduced cast time from 1.1 seconds to .6 seconds. Reduced aftercast from .25 seconds to .2 seconds. = Nice. I use this mostly as a self-heal, but it’s used every water swap, too.
Frozen Ground: Reduced the cast time from .36 seconds to .2 seconds. Reduced the aftercast from .34 seconds to .2 seconds. = Huge for CC/ stacks. One of the top buffs for WvW.
Healing Rain: Reduced the aftercast by .3 seconds. = Please make the same change with this as you did with Water Blast so I don’t have to vocally tell people where the heal will be before I drop it. You know, like how visual Mesmer null fields are.

Utility
Tornado: Cooldown reduced to 150 seconds. = Why not 120?
Phoenix: Doubled the velocity. Added an unblockable skill fact. = Nice. Thanks.
Glyph of Elemental Power: Reduced weakness duration to 3 seconds. = I guess needed since weakness condition was buffed.

Misc
Stoning: Reduced weakness duration to 2 seconds. = Not sure if necessary, but you could just spam it regardless.
Lightning Touch: Reduced weakness duration to 3 seconds. = That’s fine.
Meteor Shower: Increased the size of the area that each meteor strikes. = Giggity.

Trident
Magma Orb: Damage increased by 33%. = Good, I guess.
Detonate on ice wall: chill 2s – > 3s = Good. But doesn’t help much.
Forked Lightning improved from .3 -> .4 = All underwater buffs are good.
Electrocute .8 – > 1.2, Recharge 5 s – > 12 s, now applies 5 stacks of vulnerbility for 6 s = This is great since I stay in air most of the time underwater.
Murky water recharge reduced from 45 to 40. = Getting the stealth to work rarely goes off, so I don’t care much about this. I think there’s a blind property to this field, too. I suck at both applications.

Traits
Arcane Lightning: This trait now grants a non-stacking 10% bonus critical damage for 15 seconds after using an arcane utility skill. = Maybe I’ll swap Mist Form for Arcane Shield or something for staff. Arcane Wave is still pretty useless unless people are going to stack on you for it, or you’re going to run into danger/ playing support. Trait only worthwhile if you use it every cd. So arcane blast has the lowest cd. What’s the ICD? Because 15s every 20s leaves 5s where you don’t have +10% crit damage. This time can also be reduced with Arcane Mastery. So 100% uptime? INC macroing exploits.

AIR
Grounded: This trait has been merged into Tempest Defense.
Tempest Defense: Internal cooldown reduced from 90 seconds to 60 seconds. Damage to stunned and knocked down enemies is increased by 20%. = Sounds good to me. I need to re-read what it does. But I use Grounded in staff already anyway. So it’s probably a big deal. -edit- Well I just read it, and it’ll only work when we get hit, instead of us stunning someone with Static Field? That sound terrible.

New grandmaster trait – Fresh Air: Critical strikes will now recharge Air Attunement. This effect can only occur once every 5 seconds. = So you would take this instead of Tempest Defense. I’m pretty sure everyone will be taking this considering how bad TD is, and how useful air attunement is in every single weapon set.
Windborne Dagger: Movement speed in combat is increased by 15% for the main-hand, 10% for the off-hand, with 25% total for both. = Good if you’re not using Signet of Air’s new stun-breaker. But still, who traits this over the other goodies?

EARTH
Obsidian Focus: Toughness is increased while channeling from 170 at level 80 to 300 at level 80. = Excellent for scepter glass-cannon of air 1 spam. If the earth in scepter is faster, even better.
Salt Stone: This trait has been merged into Stone Splinters.
Stone Splinters: Moved to Adept. This trait now deals 5% bonus damage to bleeding opponents and increases outgoing bleeding duration by 20%. = Good for scepter, again, especially if you crit and can get back into air faster with the Fresh Air trait.
Rock Solid: This trait has been moved to the master tier.
New grandmaster trait – Diamond Skin: 10% of your total toughness is converted into condition damage. = This might be huge for that 1% of eles running Rabid gear. I foolishly bought Carrion first with badges. It sits in the bank forever. lol

FIRE
Lava Tomb: This trait’s internal cooldown has been reduced to 10 seconds, damage from the lava font is increased by 33%. Damage dealt while in the downed state is increased by 33%. = If you’re glass staff, this will be a serious consideration.
Persisting Flame: Updated this trait to also allow Blast finishers you do to give Fury(10s) as well as might. = Tying into the new Arcane abilities above, this will be fun to play with. -edit- I didn’t know this effected Lava Font and Burning Retreat. ARGH. Still 30 points in the Fire tree is usually too much. However, you might get rezzed a lot easier from downed state, save for the fact that you have 10k health and it won’t matter much.

WATER
Bountiful Power: Damage increase per boon on the elementalist has been reduced from 2% to 1%. = Don’t care much. I haven’t been running higher than 20 water for D/D in months.

(Edit: Had to use 2 posts to adhere body length. My responses to each thing are after the = equals sign.)

TL;DR In general I have always enjoyed s/d and staff over d/d anyway. But D/D is required for roaming. I will be playing mostly staff after patch, but I’m not sure how tanky we can be with D/D anymore. I’ve never really used healing power gear enough to be a proper tank, but it might be the new (well, new for me) meta.

obviously overall a great patch for ele.
Addresses the staff problems pretty good with much faster overall spell juggling.

It’s massive actually. If I got my sums right that is 3.85 seconds cut off from full blow everything that got more speedy.
Casting all those currently takes about 19 seconds, so thats 20% cut off from big part of the rotation. And reduced after casts on Shockwave and Static Field are some of the key ones to help staff hit stuff.

30 fire scepter dagger glass will rock the PvE and 30 air will revolutionize scepter dagger glass PvP.

Most things people pointed out already so I won’t say them again.

-Persisting Flame: Updated this trait to also allow Blast finishers you do to give Fury(10s) as well as might.

Is there a 5 second cool down for that trait? Going to incorporate that into my PvE build regardless though. If there is no cool down… s/d eles will do so much in dungeons. Before it was keeping 25 stacks of might on yourself and few nearby teammates, now it’s 25 stacks of might “quicker” plus fury on top of that.

Sunflowers.1729:

New stun breakers:
Mist form (no change)
Signet of Air
Glyph of Elemental Power
Armor of Earth (no change)

No longer a stun breaker:
Lightning Flash
Cleansing Fire

Seems fair, and since Signet of Air breaks stuns, I can now run Ether Renewal to replace Cleansing Fire, while maintaining permanent (pseudo) swiftness while in WvW.

Here is reality:

New stun breakers:

Signet of Air – * No reason to ever slot this because it is still useless *

Glyph of Elemental Power – * Cool, but I will never be popping glyph for the stun breaker specifically, which means by and large, adding the stun breaker to this ability is useless and wasteful *

No longer a stun breaker:

Lightning Flash – This is a heavy nerf to one of the best survivability tools a staff ele had. Staff eles have no mobility and this was the tool to use to allow you to break stun and reposition yourself.

Cleansing Fire – this is now a useless ability, I sure the hell never slotted it for condition removal because I have enough of that already. It was for the stun break

Fiontar.4695:

Nikkinella.8254:

They should have given eles the anti movement condition instead of thieves. Would make staff ele a hell of alot better. Right now it’s still a free kill. That would atleast make it somewhat of a threat. Giving it to thieves was the stupidest idea ever. Standing still against a thief is suicide. now moving away from their stupidly OP burst damage will get you killed too thanks to a new condition. great job once again at balancing things Anet. And why still no reduction in our attunement recharge rate? we still have to spec into arcane because of that.

I agree. My head wants to explode trying to figure out why they would give it to Thief. Has to be one of the most baffling balance changes I’ve seen in an MMO to date. The rest of the patch looks pretty good to me, this is the stand out “what the heck are they thinking” part of the patch notes.

Totally agree. Thieves have so many way to escape anyways. They have hughe spike damage now and you always have to chase them. So with now with their burst damage, you cannot chase them either since you will die from that. Basically stand still and die, or move and die. The thing is thieves and mesmers are already two of the most hardest to catch professions. Why making it even harder?

Elementalists should have gotten the new ability. If you are adding it to Mesmers, why not add it to Elementalists. As a staff user, this would be great. Always get chased around anyways, at least when they are chasing they can get damaged while doing it

Thaia.5146:

Glyph of Elemental Power: This skill is now a stun breaker.
Still useless as a combat skill.

Agree that adding a stun breaker to it is useless, but the ability itself most definitely is not, at least not in big fights in WvW or GvG.

covenn.7165:

Here is reality:

New stun breakers:

Signet of Air – * No reason to ever slot this because it is still useless *

Glyph of Elemental Power – * Cool, but I will never be popping glyph for the stun breaker specifically, which means by and large, adding the stun breaker to this ability is useless and wasteful *

No longer a stun breaker:

Lightning Flash – This is a heavy nerf to one of the best survivability tools a staff ele had. Staff eles have no mobility and this was the tool to use to allow you to break stun and reposition yourself.

Cleansing Fire – this is now a useless ability, I sure the hell never slotted it for condition removal because I have enough of that already. It was for the stun break

Why can’t you let me be happy?! Gosh!

But seriously, I think Lightning Flash will still be able to be used when stunned, except that after you port, you will still be stunned. I’ll definitely keep it on my skill bar.

However, I don’t think these notes are actually real, or at the very least, complete. And if they are, it’s time to play my D/P Thief because it somehow got zero nerfs (5-2-1-5-2-1 I win!).

Hello Scepter Dagger burst builds. Burst in lightning, use Phoenix, hope for the crit and if it does, burst with lightning again. I think we can see a viable (semi) glass cannon build.

LOL @ this patch. yea i m glad we are all exited about some staff and scepter burst options. GL with it, it will take 2 sec to burst you down with a mesmer or thief.

if legit this Diamond Skin grandmaster trait is awesome news for my condition ele.

I’m also super stoked on all the cast time reductions…it was the only thing that annoyed me about running with a staff.

Lets wait and see what Anet dishes up with. A bit too soon to trust these leaks… although it is tempting to imagine these changes.

Sunflowers.1729:

But seriously, I think Lightning Flash will still be able to be used when stunned, except that after you port, you will still be stunned. I’ll definitely keep it on my skill bar.

Yeah, if you still teleport while being stunned then it will still be useful and I too will keep it on the bar. We shall see how it plays out….. but you can at least see my obvious concern.

Loss of stun break on lightning flash hurts, loss of stun break on cleansing fire is baffling, and where they added the stun breaks is even more baffling.

Anyways, i have my bursty gear ready and waiting.

I really hope this is incomplete. The fire line needs a lot more work.
Regarding cantrips I definitely dislike but am not surprised that they hit the best stun breakers hardest, the counter balance buffs are a little weak imo. The hit on the water grandmaster really hurts, but it’s really just in line with guardians now. The glyph chosen for stun breaking is an odd one. Hopefully it gets some rework to an active effect.

Ov.erall spreading things out stun breakers was nice and weaker builds are definitely picking up some slack, but fire needs some love,

I am actually REALLY excited about the change to signet of air! It is now a 30s (24s traited) stun-break, that does aoe-blinds, and passively increases speed to near-swiftness levels when not used. It is an absolutely beastly defensive utility, because it is always doing something for you. We used to need 3 cantrips for the stun-breaks b/c they were on such a long cooldown, but I would be comfortable with signet of air alone if I were playing aggressive (or in a signet build), or signet of air + mistform for stunbreaks if I wanted to bunker. This is actually a serious buff. The damage mitigation is great: stunbreak + aoe blind on 30s cooldown. Think about it!

Good change for us Staff folks but it wont change my build:
WvW Staff Ele 0/10/30/10/20

However I will adjust one trait in earth to take stone splinters over Earths Embrace. Rock Solid still better, with my equipment, then the new trait and written in stone.

Signet of Air
I have rotation utility slot and signet of Air falls in it. Get stunned, hit this to get out of stun and blind opponent at same time. Whats not to like.

Tornado
150 instead of 180. Great situation utility and can use it a bit more.

CC:
Great news on Frozen Ground and Unsteady Ground changes.

If sig o’ air still does the ranged aoe blind, then using it as a stun breaker is decent to use. speed, avoidance, and break in 1.

So with the new ‘Fresh Air’ talent (Crits take Air Attunement off CD, 5 sec ICD), that would mean almost perma up-time of Air ay, coz by the time you go back into air and use your abilities then go out and use another ability and crit, the 5 sec ICD would have passed.

This seems like a fun talent for bursting, but i just hope in the future they don’t decide to increase the ICD.

But for now i will still have to see how much my D/D build is getting hurt, most times i have from 5-7 boons, so i will lose 5-7% in overall damage. And lucky for me the 2 cantrips i ran with were Armor and Mist heh, but i did run 3 in sPvP. :P

O well, still not getting used to the RTL nerf, have to always tell myself not to use it because i will have to wait 40 seconds, at least this patch doesn’t force a change on the way i play, just nerfs the damage abit. ^^

/sob my necromancer is happy, but my ele build was totally wrecked by 1 change, the signet of air, please keep it at 20 sec.

i do believe that these are a penultimate iteration of the patchnotes, but not the final ones.

I liked using Signet of Air during my casting of dagger earth #5. I will still probably do that, although if I am casting that spell, I presumably do not need a stunbreaker.

I really hope there are more changes. The rubbish fire traits were not even addressed, and neither was the 25 arcane trait’s 7% proc rate on crit.

Also the Attunement specific 5 point traits still absolutely suck, other than water’s.

I’m seeing a bright future future for S/D eles.
No real changes for D/D. Just don’t bring cleansing fire anymore

^lightning flash also took a hit though.

My understanding is that you’ll still be able to use lightning flash while stunned. You’ll just remain stunned after the teleport but it will wear off before your opponent can get back to you.

Which is still quite a hit because that’s 2seconds you could be fighting. Besides, what if they aren’t melee?

DiogoSilva.7089:

Topic creator: I recommend you to remove the link, if you don’t want anet to delete this thread.

Air attunement recharge can be pretty good for the s/d valkyrie burster eles. Imagine making a huge air burst (instant air skills + air 15 trait + fire sigil + arcanes), switching to another attunement, and switching back to air for a huge burst. Usually, this would require investment in arcana so you can switch back to air quickly, but the grandmaster trait would allow you to override the “advantage” of investing in arcane. Yes, it would mean less acess to other attunements, but you would burst (=kill) faster with air, and have vulnerability on critical + more precision and critical damage. Pretty big.

Tempest Defense would become awesome. The shocking aura synergies itself with grounded, it would be a strong trait both offensively and defensively, and synergy well with aura traits. If someone striked you, they would get stunned, and you would get fury, swiftness, protection (maybe) and deal 20% more damage to them. That IS good.

Fire’s grandmaster trait change is awesome, but everything else in that traitlibe is still rather lame and the change to lava tomb is too niche.

You cannot take fresh air and groundet.

I think the new changes will have the biggest advantage in TPVP. And the Elementalist will be a very hard hitter.
So with S/D + arcanes will be a real nuker.
I could imagine something like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhImIblR5gjDAEFm8i4hFO0QRxM5A-ToAA0CnIqRVjrGTNyas1MoYSA

Grandmaster Air should be the new Fresh Air.
So if you got a good hit there could be 3 lightning strikes every 5 sec possible
and a better hitting phoenix.
only loosing evasive arcana and a little higher rechare for the other attunements.

BlackBeard.2873:

I am actually REALLY excited about the change to signet of air! It is now a 30s (24s traited) stun-break, that does aoe-blinds, and passively increases speed to near-swiftness levels when not used. It is an absolutely beastly defensive utility, because it is always doing something for you. We used to need 3 cantrips for the stun-breaks b/c they were on such a long cooldown, but I would be comfortable with signet of air alone if I were playing aggressive (or in a signet build), or signet of air + mistform for stunbreaks if I wanted to bunker. This is actually a serious buff. The damage mitigation is great: stunbreak + aoe blind on 30s cooldown. Think about it!

let me see, signet of airs passiv is pretty bad if you have perma swiftness up, so only people without perma swiftness will use it. Now if you use your stunbraker, you ll loose your mobility for 30 s? maybee you can squeeze in 10sec of quickness from swapping to air. This will not let you outrun your opponents, specially with all the buffs to warrior mobility. With the result, that you ll prolly die in this 30 sec till your air signet is up again.

This Patch is just tricking people into not beeing able to kite as well or go more offensiv. Everyone who s played the ele extensivly knows, if you don t have a crap load of defensiv stats you re just a easy kill on the field. Your dmg by going offensivly will always be inferior to other classes who have better escape or avoidance mechanisms built in or in their weapon sets. points @ Mesmers, or actually all classes with movememnt skills.

While the updates on the staff are certainly nice, it still wont change that you need the opponent to stand in your aoe field, which we know from our experience is not happening.
scepter still only has 2 good offensiv spells, and some really crappy auto attacks.The Phoenix change is really good, because it s the only thing worth using in fire.

If you read the patch notes of other classes, you ll see that they all got improvements to their existing builds. Just check the warrior, it s an over abbundance of nice changes.
all we have got is nerfs to our existing competitive build and some improvements to abilitys who were and still will be subpar.

The staff eles changes are nice for the current Paintrain META, no doubt about that.
But there will be no stoping warriors, when they have become immune to slow effects and have basicly perma stability up.

all in all 1 thing will change for the ele with this patch. You ll die alot more often and we will represent the META ranking in a lower position

Did I miss the sceptre buffs, and the fire tree fixes? Burning Fire (lol nice name Anet…) is still there, Burning Precision still only gives 1 second of burn for a proc on a proc, and Flame barrier still completely sucks.

I doubt and hope that these are true. It would be a really LAZY approach to dealing with ele’s issues.

1. Bunkers barely touched, again.

2. Scepter burst becoming even more ridiculously overpowered, nerfs will follow.

3. Inconsistency and lazy design for the new and old stun breakers.
-Lightning flash was a stun breaker just like blink and shadowstep, it should remain as one.
-Glyph of elemental power is an ability that must be used at the right time, in the right attunement. It’s not supposed to be a panic button.

4. Lots of channeling times decreased, not so much about actual cooldowns (Fire aura, gale, freezing gust still have way too high cooldowns, and many other spells)

5. Lol at electrocute (underwater air #2) getting a 12 sec cooldown up from 5. Vulnerability or not, it’s a #2 spell, it should have a moderately low cooldown.

6. Glass d/d is still trash and no sign of compensation buffs in sight. I guess dagger main hand is simply supposed to play as a bunker, no other choice.

While some things look interesting, sadly it’s just a mess of poor balancing and kneejerk reactions, again.

I hope it’s not true, and I also wish I could say that I would expect better from ANet, but I just can’t. These notes really seem like something they would come up with lmao.

Also despite the buff to the 30 fire trait, fire is STILL a useless tree to invest in. IMO, instead of nerfing bountiful power, they should have moved it to the fire tree to ya know actually let our damage tree have some decent damage and making it worth investing in. Then added some sort of defensive boost in the water tree to replace the moved trait. That plus making blasting staff and the 9 sec attunement thing baseline would open up tons of new build possibilities. And replace the blasting staff trait with a skill that does 200 to toughness while wielding a staff or something like that

Im calling 50% dmg reduction on lightning strike in the next patch notes. With dps sce/dag build and new air gm trait you can basically switch to air after every other attunement dealing massive amounts of instant, hard to predict no-skill damage. Ppl will complain
Staff stuff looks good! Ive decided to come back to ele when staff is viable.. maybe now I can!

A few comments about the notes -

Firstly, I can’t understand why Anet would make Glyph of Elemental Power a stunbreaker. I mean, I get that they wanted to move stunbreakers into other skill families, and that GoEP is the best fit amongst glyphs (not saying much!), but it’s a buffing/offensive skill, not a defensive one. Why not give the stunbreak property to Arcane Shield, and give the arcane family a stunbreak instead of glyphs?

Secondly, I’m a bit concerned that there’s not enough of a draw to the <30 area of the fire traitline for many builds.

Thirdly, I had hoped/expected to see some love for focus (esp. fire). The change to the cast speed of Firewall is nice and all, but the fire attunement there is still very lacklustre….Firewall only seems useful if the opponent is foolish enough to stand in it (and Fire Shield is hardly a big draw) Also about focus, it still seems odd that there’s no trait that relates purely to eles holding focus (I mean, there are traits that are contingent on staff, dagger and sceptre, but not focus).

Kind of unsurprised that Bountiful Power is being nerfed – was always a bit too good IMO.

Now looking forward to at least trying out “Fresh Air” – sounds like it will be fun!

You are reading them wrong.

Jijimuge.4675:

Firstly, I can’t understand why Anet would make Glyph of Elemental Power a stunbreaker. I mean, I get that they wanted to move stunbreakers into other skill families, and that GoEP is the best fit amongst glyphs (not saying much!), but it’s a buffing/offensive skill, not a defensive one. Why not give the stunbreak property to Arcane Shield, and give the arcane family a stunbreak instead of glyphs?

Same here, I don’t understand why they made GoEP a stunbreaker….. It doesn’t make any sense to keep a buff unused, to use as a stun breaker. I don’t get what they were thinking with this one.

GoEP is the most stupid option of a stunbreaker that they could think of. Even random racial skills would make more sense…

Spiuk.8421:

You are reading them wrong.

survivability has always been the number one reason dps specs havent been viable (wvw/pvp). these notes dont do anything to improve that (i take that back, the new obsidian focus does a little).

fresh air looks sick, sure, but scepter has always had good burst. all this does is make the burst easier to use by de-emphasizing fire. nothing for survivability for staff, scepter or dagger. nothing for out of control long kitten focus cooldowns.

if anything, survivability is hurt overall by putting stun breakers on skills that arent designed to be conserved (Glyph of Elements lol?).

Raven.9603:

survivability has always been the number one reason dps specs havent been viable (wvw/pvp). these notes dont do anything to improve that (i take that back, the new obsidian focus does a little).

fresh air looks sick, sure, but scepter has always had good burst. all this does is make the burst easier to use by de-emphasizing fire. nothing for survivability for staff, scepter or dagger. nothing for out of control long kitten focus cooldowns.

if anything, survivability is hurt overall by putting stun breakers on skills that arent designed to be conserved (Glyph of Elements lol?).

Lately in WvW and PvP I’ve been doing a 30/0/30/10/0 build and honestly the only thing I need at this point is a stun breaker. You give it to me and it and a few of these other changes and it’ll break the build wide open.

Raven.9603:

Spiuk.8421:

You are reading them wrong.

survivability has always been the number one reason dps specs havent been viable (wvw/pvp). these notes dont do anything to improve that (i take that back, the new obsidian focus does a little).

fresh air looks sick, sure, but scepter has always had good burst. all this does is make the burst easier to use by de-emphasizing fire. nothing for survivability for staff, scepter or dagger. nothing for out of control long kitten focus cooldowns.

if anything, survivability is hurt overall by putting stun breakers on skills that arent designed to be conserved (Glyph of Elements lol?).

Another form of survivability is ..killing faster :P
With air spells every 5 sec or so i dont see why your single target burst would bad compared to what mesmers have for example,plus you got aoe,prot and regen and mobility with flash and rtl.
Also i dont know if glyph will be instant.They never said it would and.. it could still stunbreak at start of cast and get in full cd if it gets interrupted afterwards or something
But regardlessyou could roll with glyph heal and pick inscription to make up for the loss of cantrip regen and give prot/regen while stunbreaking..
Without evasive arcana signet doesnt seem as good anyway and i havent done the math but it would be really lame if traited glyph heal cant compete straight up with singet..

Staff buffs yay!

But not so yay for removal of stun break on Lightning Flash.

Now I have to figure out another stun breaker to spec…prolly mist from eh.

Can’t play any aspect of GW2 without at least one other wise your dead meat. :\

Do not make confusion between being a stunbreaker and being usable while stunned…the note says lightning flash won’t be a stun breaker anymore…Not that it won’t be usable while stunned. So we can reasonably think it will still be usable while stunned (like arcane skills for example) and if it’s the the case the time you’ll buy with the TP will let you get back on your feet… So it might still be effective…