Guild Wars 2

The insanely long cast time -4.5 seconds- AND lack of stability on this ability renders it completely useless in PVE, sPvP and even the zerg fest that is WvW.

Its really depressing mentioning it to other classes and even elementalists and hearing: Glyph of what? response..that is how bad and useless it is.

It is faster to actually attempt to revive the person the old fashioned way.

Is this intentional for it to be this long to cast?

I have a feeling its a bug since when the skill is on the toolbar, the activation time is shown to be 4¼, however when selecting the skill from the utility skill box or checking the skill from the Slot Skills page in the Hero Pane, the activation time is shown to be 1¼. Now that would be an acceptable cast time for it to hold a valuable Trait slot.

My suggestions would be:
A.Reduce the cast time to 1.5 seconds to beat someone downing the target -assume they have stability on or using stealth that does not break on performing the downing action!- and to beat the time in reviving the person the conventional way..kneeling beside them and touching them in weird places. Here are the reasons for A:
1.Elementalists are already at a disadvantage and support being a viable build, we need this. Otherwise roll a guardian to fulfill that role.
2. The health of a downed person can be close to full health at times given the person healing themselves or using appropriate food so it HAS to give an advantage by making it significantly faster than simply reviving the person in order for us to use a precious trait skill slot for it.
3.I can easily cc the unstable stomper and immediately pop armor of earth for stability/protection for 8 seconds and rez. Thus I have armor of earth doing the same intended job as well as having the benefit of protection and stability from it that I can use in other situations.
4.The bonuses from the rez based on attunements do not justify the long casting time: Earth: Yes, valid assuming you can cast the 4.5 seconds since one person will be stomped and the other 1-2 might not be. Even then, you are failing at achieving the objective which is rezzing a person..just revive the person that isn’t focused..see 3 above.
Fire: Its only for a few seconds that you will get the revive. This should be increased as from prior experiences the time ticks by quickly and thus you wasted the effect. Unless your expecting to die as usual being an elementalist..
Air: A fair ability but is useless if its 4.5 seconds since most of these situations its to rez someone at the foot of a keep or tower being multifocused with damage quickly.
Water: A good bonus.
5. Funny story..the act of finishing a downed player does not break your stealth! I swear! True story! So basically a stealther can finish your target while your there waving your hands in the air for 4.5 seconds. Might as well

B.Keep the casting time and make it rez a defeated state. It takes such a long time to cast at 4.5 seconds that it would be easily interrupted in spvp -where the majority of balancing issues come into play- and it can be just as easily interrupted by the mass numbers in WvW. Yes I can pop stability prior to using it but I paid the price of two trait skills to perform one action so it should be a justified reward. Many other classes do the same thing for using certain abilities as well.

C.If cast time is reduced you can move it to elite if really needed. We don’t have good ones in comparison to other classes, anyway.

This is an easy fix. Is it possible to have a look into it? Don’t worry..we will never be as OP as mesmers, thieves or guardians.

I think at this point the only thing we can probably ask is Glyph of Renewal can be moved to our “elite” slot.

That way, all our useless crap can be sorted together for ease of access.

Maybe make the glyph of elementals elite a slightly different color since there are some uses for it.

On a more serious note, the only real way to fix it would be to make it instant (and even then, it would still probably be a waste of a skill slot, since you can accomplish the same thing quicker by just myst form rezzing), or just bring it back to the old form where it actually rezzes dead people.

Maybe with some limitations, remove the attunement dependent stuff, and just make it a simple PB single target rezz…
I dunno, it was a such a “situational” skill before it was “fixed” that pretty much no serious elementalist actually ran it in the skill bar, now it’s just…. sigh

You think you have problems with your rez skills. Try the guardian one – You don’t have it so bad in that department. It revives a single downed person nearby with an equally long cast time , longer cooldown and no secondary effects.

Keelin.5781:

You think you have problems with your rez skills. Try the guardian one – You don’t have it so bad in that department. It revives a single downed person nearby with an equally long cast time , longer cooldown and no secondary effects.

That just establishes a pattern where the devs believe rezzing skills must be an absolute waste of time. If they weren’t, they would probably be mandatory for every teambased aspect to the game whatsoever.

Still makes you wonder why they added rezzing skills in the first place if they intended to make them so, so terrible. It’s just a newbie skill point trap.

I’d say just get rid of them already and replace them with some actually usable skills.

Scribbles.7493:

Keelin.5781:

You think you have problems with your rez skills. Try the guardian one – You don’t have it so bad in that department. It revives a single downed person nearby with an equally long cast time , longer cooldown and no secondary effects.

That just establishes a pattern where the devs believe rezzing skills must be an absolute waste of time. If they weren’t, they would probably be mandatory for every teambased aspect to the game whatsoever.

Still makes you wonder why they added rezzing skills in the first place if they intended to make them so, so terrible. It’s just a newbie skill point trap.

I’d say just get rid of them already and replace them with some actually usable skills.

Pretty much this. I keep trying to find a way to fit it in every new build I make, yet just can’t find a way to make it worthwhile.

It used to be that I ran Glyph of Renewal and swore by it, but after it not reviving from dead, it was just a 5 second windup that usually ended up in the target being dead or revived from other sources. Casting time needs to go down, or it needs to revive from dead, maybe make it an elite skill or some other downside if need be. Right now, all it’s good for is using the air attunement to pull dead NPCs to you instead of running up to revive them to avoid trouble in dungeons. That’s… about all the use I can think of for it.

it was nearly useless before the last patch, now it’s beyond useless. Removed from my bar and hoping someday it will be worth the points I spent on it -,-’

The earth attunement res is still extremely clutch in dungeons. Otherwise, you really don’t want to use it anywhere else.

At the very least, I can res 3 people while kiting around instead of stunning myself manually ressing people.

The nerf was absolutely needed! The skill was absolutely gamebreaking.

I could rezz with 100% success 3 already stomped allies in earth attunement with full life and all cooldowns available even the elites.

You could never win in tpvp a clash fight if the other team had an (mostly) support ele with this skill in his bar.

It even hard countered time stomps!

Evie, you’re absolutely right. Being able to revive 3 dead players and immediately turn a fight around was pretty overpowered (hilarious, but definitely OP). But they nerfed it too hard. It’s now a 5 second channel to do something most other classes can do in two. Also assuming you don’t get interrupted. It went from pretty kitten useful to completely useless in all but the most specific of circumstances.

What I’d like is for them to change it to the following:

Revives allies from downed with full HP, additional effects based on attunement. Change casting time to two or three seconds for all that is holy.
Fire: Next time you go down, auto-rally.
Air: Pulls target to you. Grants swiftness to caster and target.
Earth: Rallies nearest 3 friendlies. -OR- Rallies target, grants 4 second stability and protection to target.
Water: Here’s the kicker; fully revives target from dead, but with maximum down penalty. In other words, target will be revived from dead with 3 stacks of downed penalty, so next time they go down, they die immediately. Possibly increase casting time to 5 seconds again for water attunement.

So yeah. Something to that effect, in part or in whole. At the very least, reduce the cast time.

Alex.9507:

Evie, you’re absolutely right. Being able to revive 3 dead players and immediately turn a fight around was pretty overpowered (hilarious, but definitely OP). But they nerfed it too hard. It’s now a 5 second channel to do something most other classes can do in two. Also assuming you don’t get interrupted. It went from pretty kitten useful to completely useless in all but the most specific of circumstances.

Here’s the hint: you can move while casting the glyph. That makes it a lot better than spending that same 4.5seconds stunning yourself trying to res someone. Also, it is an non-elite skill. Not that elites are fantastic for eles, but point still stands.

Keelin.5781:

You think you have problems with your rez skills. Try the guardian one – You don’t have it so bad in that department. It revives a single downed person nearby with an equally long cast time , longer cooldown and no secondary effects.

Yes you are an OP class and have many wonderful talents. Why do we get people backdoor complaining about their OP class not being OP enough? Give me half the guardian skills and utilities and you can have the GOR.

Pikafan.3792:

Alex.9507:

Evie, you’re absolutely right. Being able to revive 3 dead players and immediately turn a fight around was pretty overpowered (hilarious, but definitely OP). But they nerfed it too hard. It’s now a 5 second channel to do something most other classes can do in two. Also assuming you don’t get interrupted. It went from pretty kitten useful to completely useless in all but the most specific of circumstances.

Here’s the hint: you can move while casting the glyph. That makes it a lot better than spending that same 4.5seconds stunning yourself trying to res someone. Also, it is an non-elite skill. Not that elites are fantastic for eles, but point still stands.

Moving around does not negate the fact that it is basically 4.5 seconds and does not negate the arguments in the starting post. The main point is it takes longer to cast it than revive a person the regular way. Also, how many times have we seen an ele just walking around for 4.5 seconds attracting attention in the peripheral screen of vision without being attacked. Even a mindless zerg gets attracted to a tiny asura moving, I’m afraid.

Alex.9507:

Evie, you’re absolutely right. Being able to revive 3 dead players and immediately turn a fight around was pretty overpowered (hilarious, but definitely OP). But they nerfed it too hard. It’s now a 5 second channel to do something most other classes can do in two. Also assuming you don’t get interrupted. It went from pretty kitten useful to completely useless in all but the most specific of circumstances.

What I’d like is for them to change it to the following:

Revives allies from downed with full HP, additional effects based on attunement. Change casting time to two or three seconds for all that is holy.
Fire: Next time you go down, auto-rally.
Air: Pulls target to you. Grants swiftness to caster and target.
Earth: Rallies nearest 3 friendlies. -OR- Rallies target, grants 4 second stability and protection to target.
Water: Here’s the kicker; fully revives target from dead, but with maximum down penalty. In other words, target will be revived from dead with 3 stacks of downed penalty, so next time they go down, they die immediately. Possibly increase casting time to 5 seconds again for water attunement.

So yeah. Something to that effect, in part or in whole. At the very least, reduce the cast time.

Again, with a 4.5 second it would not matter if it granted you and the rezzed the power to poop unicorns and rainbows. You still can not cast it in time in the majority of the situations.

Either reduce the cast time -hell.. slot it in an elite..god knows ours are not good and my golem is tired >.>- or make it rez downed players.

If rezzing 3 players from defeated state is too much then reduce the benefit from earth. Make it for 2 players or grant you and the rezzed target protection/stability to go with the theme of earth.

Evie.1758:

The nerf was absolutely needed! The skill was absolutely gamebreaking.

I could rezz with 100% success 3 already stomped allies in earth attunement with full life and all cooldowns available even the elites.

You could never win in tpvp a clash fight if the other team had an (mostly) support ele with this skill in his bar.

It even hard countered time stomps!

I fully agree. That is why I suggested the above. One shouldn’t knee jerk and over react to something by nerfing it to the ground. The earth ability is OP but aside from that the others are not in tPvP.

XII.9401:

Blah blah blah

Sorry that you can’t deal with the fact that this skill was brought into line with the rest.
It’s still one of the better res skills even now.
Other balance issues have pretty little to do with this discussion in particular.

Evie.1758:

The nerf was absolutely needed! The skill was absolutely gamebreaking.

I could rezz with 100% success 3 already stomped allies in earth attunement with full life and all cooldowns available even the elites.

You could never win in tpvp a clash fight if the other team had an (mostly) support ele with this skill in his bar.

It even hard countered time stomps!

too bad that mages are supposed to do – guess what – magic, therefore accomplishing tasks far beyond mortals limits (i.e: iron bars swinging brutes, spooky sneaky punks, glittering thugs and so on).
Being a classic I will repeat it once again: there are no problems being squishy, but that must come in exchange for true wonders. This is what is currently missing from Elementalist class: it is not rewarding. At most, you can achieve the same results as other classes, just with 50 times the effort.

I agree with the reducing the cast time on it.

I really enjoy playing my elementalist and although I’ve gotten a thief to 50 and a warrior to 35, I still feel more engaged in the fights with the elementalist, but they do seem a bit on the weak side, and to find out that most of the other professions get a 2.5 second cast time on revive signets? and do more damage….. and rarely have to swap stances/weapons(read attunement).. and can tank… and can perma blind / stun lock single targets…. and have better CC….

Really elementalists get drug along behind everyone else. A good player will make contributions to the fights with combo fields, and a earth attunement renewal can save a 15 minute fight in that last little bit, but still the elementalists are the weakest class in the game atm. At least give us a res skill on par with the other classes!

I agree the cast time is too long, but i personally still use glyph of renewal, and will continue to do so… I like it.

I use it while soloing out in cursed shore, when morons just arent fast enough to get out of the way of the abomination, and 3-4 people go down, I can easily get 3 people up and back in the fight.

But im a healer, so your mileage will vary

Putting aside whether or not the nerf was necessary, or how much it sucks, the fact that you could ever revive defeated players was a bug in and of itself. ANet was simply fixing that bug with last week’s patch. I remember trying to figure out how the heck it worked back in BWE1, and only after Googling “Glyph of Renewal not working” (which you can still do to find those same posts) did I find that many others thought it worked on defeated players, when in fact it was for downed players only.

Take a look at this old entry in the wiki from September 1st, it still worked (mostly) as intended back then. It wasn’t until a patch after launch that it started reviving defeated allies. Go through other entries using the links at the top to see how the skill has changed over time.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/index.php?title=Glyph_of_Renewal&direction=next&oldid=315524

On top of all that, it seems that using Glyph of Renewal in earth attunement still revives not 3, but a seemingly infinite number of defeated allies. I’ve been using it these past few days after I saw another elementalist use it in one of my TA runs. I was only able to test with 7 dead NPCs at my feet just now at the champion giant event in the Town of Nageling, and lo and behold, all 7 were raised. All 7! I’m sure I could get up 50 people if I had enough people to help me test it. So please ANet, if you’re going to fix your skills, please fix them all the way. This is very game-breaking!

Yeah I noticed the earth version too..lol

I was like “hmmm i dont think thats supposed to be that way…”

Upon further research, it seems that you can only revive an infinite number of NPCs. It’s still 3 for players. Still, the fact that you can still revive 3 defeated players is a bug.