Guild Wars 2

At least in PvE, the CDs need to be lowered. They are so high that it just makes our elites underwhelming when they are actually pretty kitten awesome skills if we were only allowed to use them more than once every 5 fights. Right now, their high CDs make the skills feel extremely unrewarding, and reducing those CDs could help a lot. Throughout this post I will talk about the elite CDs as if you are not running chronomancer since not everyone owns HoT, and when we get the next expac we will likely have a just as good or better option for our elite spec (one which won’t have CS).

TW – To start, ANet has all but admitted that its fine on a 76.5 sec CD since they haven’t nerfed its synergy with CS yet even after over a year. But more than that, TW on its own provides 7.2% uptime traited, whereas WoA provides 12% uptime on quickness alone. Why is it that a utility skill has more uptime on quickness than our elite skill whose sole job is to provide quickness and slow enemies? WoA is also an AoE effect, it even deals damage to enemies (albeit an insignificant amount). What we have is a utility skill that is more useful than an elite skill, which should never happen. Decreasing the CD on TW to 90 seconds would double the uptime we have on it to around 14.5%. Better yet would be reducing its CD to 80 seconds, which would provide 13.75% uptime on quickness from using TW untraited. I think this is completely reasonable. As it stands now, with a CD of 180 seconds, you can’t even use it all that often. It doesn’t feel like an elite due to its low uptime. Simply reducing its CD allows it to feel more like an elite skill without actually buffing it in any way

SoH – Again, ANet has basically admitted that using this skill every 76.5 seconds is not too overpowered (even though the skill itself was nerfed hard several times). But my focus here is on PvE and not PvP. In PvE SoH is used mainly as hard CC to break breakbars fast. Its great at this, it really is. But its high CD means that this is all its ever used for in PvE, its just not worth blowing a 3 min CD to turn a single trash mob into a Moa for 6 seconds. Even in large fights though (legendary mobs, world bosses, fractal/dungeon bosses), where you have to break the bar multiple times, due to its 3 min CD, you can use SoH all of one time before the fight is over, yet these fights usually require you to break the bar more than once. Hell in dungeons you can use SoH to break a bar on a boss and then won’t be able to use it again for the next 2 encounters depending on how good your group is. That’s pretty unacceptable for an elite skill. In PvE reduce its CD to 90 seconds, in PvP its CD could be reduced to 120 seconds (again this CD is still almost twice as long as CS, so SoH would still not be as powerful as it is with CS, so I don’t see a problem with this).

MI – This skill is pretty good, but I think its CD should be lowered to 60 seconds (75 at the least). Just some quick math here. MI provides 5 sec of invisibility, 7.5 sec with PU trait. This means it gives you and your group 8.33% uptime on stealth. That’s pretty strong, I admit. However, compare this to The Prestige. Which gives you 15% uptime on stealth traited with PU. TP also deals damage, blinds enemies, and acts as a combo finisher (which can blast out another 3 sec of stealth with smoke fields, providing up to 25% uptime on stealth from TP). Yes, I realize that MI is partywide stealth whereas TP is only stealth for yourself. However, think about what stealth is used for in PvE. Its mainly used for skipping content and channeling a few HP. Under that light, more uptime is better, and TP combined with portal can be more effective to allow your group to skip content than MI can due to the higher uptime on stealth from TP (which is seriously double the uptime that MI gives out). Either the CD of MI should be lowered to 60/75 seconds (which would provide 12.5%/10% uptime traited respectively on stealth), or the duration of its stealth should be increased in PvE. I think lowering the CD is the better choice since 5 sec group stealth is already pretty strong.

Our elites are actually pretty kitten good. But their CDs are so long that they don’t feel elite. Especially for TW and SoH, you can use them so rarely that they are just extremely underwhelming skills. I think that lowering their CDs to what I propose would make them feel much more like true elite skills without directly buffing them. And, with the exception of my proposed change to MI, the new CDs are still greater than the CD for CS is, which means these would still be “weaker” than they currently are in conjunction with CS in that you wouldn’t be able to use them as often. Its much needed change in my opinion, but would like to hear what others think about it.

I’d say they are keeping the cooldowns intentionally that high, because we can use them every 76 secs with CS (and Illusions). Taking perma alacrity into account we have 56 effective seconds. While we have the potential to basically use the elites 2 times in a row, we’d then not have it ready for the following CS’, making you really think if it’s worth it.
That being said, i definitely agree with some of the elites being incredible.. meh.. in PvE. Especially SoH is pretty underwhelming. But I guess the only hope we really have is to wait for the new elite spec and see if they make any changes to core mesmer to motivate people to leave chrono. I really hope they take a look at the elite’s cooldown again.. using TW without CS/Alacrity (so on the full 180 sec CD) is just painful to imagine.

Takashiro.8701:

I’d say they are keeping the cooldowns intentionally that high, because we can use them every 76 secs with CS (and Illusions). Taking perma alacrity into account we have 56 effective seconds. While we have the potential to basically use the elites 2 times in a row, we’d then not have it ready for the following CS’, making you really think if it’s worth it.
That being said, i definitely agree with some of the elites being incredible.. meh.. in PvE. Especially SoH is pretty underwhelming. But I guess the only hope we really have is to wait for the new elite spec and see if they make any changes to core mesmer to motivate people to leave chrono. I really hope they take a look at the elite’s cooldown again.. using TW without CS/Alacrity (so on the full 180 sec CD) is just painful to imagine.

That’s why I made this post. With CS guaranteeing that these are never on more than a 90 sec CD (though like you said, its often far, far closer to ~60 sec in PvE due to the effects of alacrity and depending on your build), the skills are absolutely amazing. But I made this post precisely because these skills are not so amazing on their actual cooldowns. For any base mesmer, or for when we get a new elite spec, the extremely long cooldowns will be noticed much more heavily than they are right now.

I want to see the CDs lowered to what I propose. And ultimately this won’t have much impact on how often you can use them during a regular raid rotation (which is the only one that really matters imo, no other fights last long enough for this to matter except world bosses), but it will free them up immensely to be used in more regular encounters. Currently if I had to go back to base mesmer I would be so hesitant to use my elites because if it didn’t pay off in a huge way I just wasted my only chance to use it for the next 3 min. Which is absurd, I really think none of the mesmer elites should have a CD of over 90 sec in PvE, and indeed imo they should be even lower than that

I get what you mean. Some people might not like to hear this, but if anet really does not want to decrease cooldown on the elite’s with CS in mind.. maybe the best way to solve this problem would be to make CS not affect elite’s anymore and then decrease the elites CD by ALOT (like your suggestions). It might be a kind of painful change for chrono but a healthy one for core mes and upcoming elite’s. Otherwise we will have core mes and all following elite’s suffering forever, just because of chrono (which might not even be played by many people anymore then). Thoughts?

Different elites have different recharge rates and effects to bring choice to the elite slot. Pretty hard to justify CD trims on the elites are affected by CS. They could rebalance all the elites to 60-90sec CD but then some elites probably wouldn’t be worth using anymore because some are only needed for their long duration every couple of minutes not short duration on a recharge that’s still too long to be useful with said short duration.

I don’t want to nerf the skills, I think the effects should remain exactly as they are. Just reduce the CDs to what I have proposed. Currently the effects on these skills are nowhere near enough to justify their ridiculous CDs in PvE, so I propose that the CD is cut while the skills remain unaffected.

@ OP So in short you want to faceroll the content even more easily in pve ?

They are trying to increase difficulty on content more and more. And some people already cry because of that (“omg i have to make the elixir everyday? wth stupid!” or “did that mob just hit me for 5k? omg so broken!” or “that troll stuns me every 5secs thats ridiculous!”), which is just sad, but not the topic here. If you want to faceroll content really hard, you can play warrior or ranger, but i dont see how a (needed) change to elite cooldowns will make content so much easier to faceroll for us. Not to mention that some elites, like TW for example, have been nerfed (quickness capping at 5 stacks) by now anyway. You can’t tell me that the 180 sec CD on this skill is justified. And yes, im talking mainly about TW, because that is and probably always will be our “main” elite in pve (not for raids though, the quickness nerf kind of killed it).

flog.3485:

@ OP So in short you want to faceroll the content even more easily in pve ?

No, I want our elite skills to feel like true elite skills. Right now they are underwhelming, and its almost entirely because of their ridiculously high cooldowns. If you look at the uptime on quickness/stealth that TW/MI give us, its less uptime than our utility and weapon skills can give us. If you look at SoH, you can use it so rarely if you aren’t running chrono that it begs the question of whether its even worth it to use if you aren’t running chrono.

This is about making our elites feel and function as a true elite skill should. Right now they are barely better than regular utility skills imo because of their cooldowns.

Besides, the CDs I proposed are all higher than the CD of CS anyway (with the exception of my preferred 60 sec CD on MI), which means we still wouldn’t be able to use them more than once every 76.5 seconds without alacrity anyway. I don’t see how reducing the CDs to what I proposed actually makes PvE any easier. All it does is make the skills feel and function as true elites. Being the best skills we have at whatever they do. Because, quite frankly, its pathetic that WoA has more quickness uptime than our traited TW. Its pathetic that TP has more uptime on stealth for us than MI does. This means these skills are just not at all elite.

F5
Mimic
Alacrity
and you are asking for more?

If you are concerned about new spec, just wait for it to be a real thing.

vicious.5683:

F5
Mimic
Alacrity
and you are asking for more?

If you are concerned about new spec, just wait for it to be a real thing.

Let me direct you to what I said in my original post, as its clear you didn’t even bother to read it.

OriOri.8724:

Throughout this post I will talk about the elite CDs as if you are not running chronomancer since not everyone owns HoT, and when we get the next expac we will likely have a just as good or better option for our elite spec (one which won’t have CS).

Besides that, you completely ignore the issue itself. If you had bothered reading, you would realize that my proposed CD changes leave them above the CD for CS already (with the exception of MI in an ideal situation), so this wouldn’t affect their synergy with CS. Mimic also only works on utility skills, not elites. On top of that, you completely dismissed any and all people who don’t own HoT for whatever reason.

The cooldowns on these skills are way too high for the low impact they have when you use them. Instead of buffing the skills, I am just proposing that the CDs are lowered to be much more reasonable so that these skills are actually elite-like. As opposed to now, where 2 of the 3 core mesmer elites are actually worse than our utility/weapon skills.

OriOri.8724:

flog.3485:

@ OP So in short you want to faceroll the content even more easily in pve ?

No, I want our elite skills to feel like true elite skills. Right now they are underwhelming, and its almost entirely because of their ridiculously high cooldowns. If you look at the uptime on quickness/stealth that TW/MI give us, its less uptime than our utility and weapon skills can give us. If you look at SoH, you can use it so rarely if you aren’t running chrono that it begs the question of whether its even worth it to use if you aren’t running chrono.

This is about making our elites feel and function as a true elite skill should. Right now they are barely better than regular utility skills imo because of their cooldowns.

Besides, the CDs I proposed are all higher than the CD of CS anyway (with the exception of my preferred 60 sec CD on MI), which means we still wouldn’t be able to use them more than once every 76.5 seconds without alacrity anyway. I don’t see how reducing the CDs to what I proposed actually makes PvE any easier. All it does is make the skills feel and function as true elites. Being the best skills we have at whatever they do. Because, quite frankly, its pathetic that WoA has more quickness uptime than our traited TW. Its pathetic that TP has more uptime on stealth for us than MI does. This means these skills are just not at all elite.

Ok I see, thanks to for better explaining your stance. Still I don’t like your idea because I don’t think it suits what the game tries to achieve: your build doesn’t revolve around which elite skill you choose , your build revolves around traits, utilities, amulets, earrings, trinkets, runes and armor. It is not like GW1 where you had multiple elite skills per weapons and points to specialize in.

Sure, a build does not only revolve around the elite skill, but its certainly also a part of it. And what Ori is suggesting here is to optimize them, so they can be better integrated into builds. I really fail to see what’s wrong with that.

Takashiro.8701:

Sure, a build does not only revolve around the elite skill, but its certainly also a part of it. And what Ori is suggesting here is to optimize them, so they can be better integrated into builds. I really fail to see what’s wrong with that.

In the end, yes maybe he is right. I think I just hate the idea that we will spamming more skills than what we have now and I also fear these changes will snowball with the skills of other players interacting with us. Personally I only use my elite skills when elite and veterans span or when I am soloing a big density of mobs to give me a bit more sustain. And in that regard I find the long cooldowns appropriate. But anyway, I am just filthy casual :p

Though I agree on the general CS-induced balance problem I feel one conceptual issue to solve first is whether Elites should be “game changers” like originally advertised to be.

They’re currently not. They’re strong, but rarely game-changers. Continuum Split should be an elite, if anything.

Now, there’s two ways to make Elites strong enough to be the anchors of class design, if wanted:

• Reduce the cooldown a lot. So much that they form the cornerstone of any class gameplay, though ofc this will also include a functionality change. For example, Time Warp could be an aura you carry around. Yes, passive (actives would be stronger), but hell, Quickness aura! (say with a 60% uptime or so on the Quickness and 40% on the slow, maybe alternating).
• Make the skills long-CD, but strong enough so that they always dominate the fight when used. This probably implies shared CDs to prevent chaining in mass combat situation (compare raid CDs in WoW), but it could allow for insanely strong elites which are truly impressive.

flog.3485:

OriOri.8724:

flog.3485:

@ OP So in short you want to faceroll the content even more easily in pve ?

No, I want our elite skills to feel like true elite skills. Right now they are underwhelming, and its almost entirely because of their ridiculously high cooldowns. If you look at the uptime on quickness/stealth that TW/MI give us, its less uptime than our utility and weapon skills can give us. If you look at SoH, you can use it so rarely if you aren’t running chrono that it begs the question of whether its even worth it to use if you aren’t running chrono.

This is about making our elites feel and function as a true elite skill should. Right now they are barely better than regular utility skills imo because of their cooldowns.

Besides, the CDs I proposed are all higher than the CD of CS anyway (with the exception of my preferred 60 sec CD on MI), which means we still wouldn’t be able to use them more than once every 76.5 seconds without alacrity anyway. I don’t see how reducing the CDs to what I proposed actually makes PvE any easier. All it does is make the skills feel and function as true elites. Being the best skills we have at whatever they do. Because, quite frankly, its pathetic that WoA has more quickness uptime than our traited TW. Its pathetic that TP has more uptime on stealth for us than MI does. This means these skills are just not at all elite.

Ok I see, thanks to for better explaining your stance. Still I don’t like your idea because I don’t think it suits what the game tries to achieve: your build doesn’t revolve around which elite skill you choose , your build revolves around traits, utilities, amulets, earrings, trinkets, runes and armor. It is not like GW1 where you had multiple elite skills per weapons and points to specialize in.

No problem, happy to make my idea more clear for people I appreciate your opinion, its not one that I had considered, but it is still equally valid. You are right though, currently GW2 is not set up in a way such that our builds revolve around our elite skills, which is unfortunate imo.

@Carighan good insight. You raise a good question. Right now I happen to feel that elite skills should be game changing skills when you use them, but mostly because that is how they have been advertised. I must say I do like your ideas of changing how elite skills function though to make them truly game changing skills, instead of just lowering the CDs so that you can use them more often.

And I definitely agree on CS.

OriOri.8724:

vicious.5683:

F5
Mimic
Alacrity
and you are asking for more?

If you are concerned about new spec, just wait for it to be a real thing.

Let me direct you to what I said in my original post, as its clear you didn’t even bother to read it.

OriOri.8724:

Throughout this post I will talk about the elite CDs as if you are not running chronomancer since not everyone owns HoT, and when we get the next expac we will likely have a just as good or better option for our elite spec (one which won’t have CS).

Besides that, you completely ignore the issue itself. If you had bothered reading, you would realize that my proposed CD changes leave them above the CD for CS already (with the exception of MI in an ideal situation), so this wouldn’t affect their synergy with CS. Mimic also only works on utility skills, not elites. On top of that, you completely dismissed any and all people who don’t own HoT for whatever reason.

The cooldowns on these skills are way too high for the low impact they have when you use them. Instead of buffing the skills, I am just proposing that the CDs are lowered to be much more reasonable so that these skills are actually elite-like. As opposed to now, where 2 of the 3 core mesmer elites are actually worse than our utility/weapon skills.

for PVE if you don’t own HOT you don’t need the spec anyways.
for PVP there are builds perfectly fine without the need of chronomancer trait line. beside if you don’t own HOT you are not taking the game seriously and you don’t deserve full content.
CDs are fine anyway.

vicious.5683:

OriOri.8724:

vicious.5683:

F5
Mimic
Alacrity
and you are asking for more?

If you are concerned about new spec, just wait for it to be a real thing.

Let me direct you to what I said in my original post, as its clear you didn’t even bother to read it.

OriOri.8724:

Throughout this post I will talk about the elite CDs as if you are not running chronomancer since not everyone owns HoT, and when we get the next expac we will likely have a just as good or better option for our elite spec (one which won’t have CS).

Besides that, you completely ignore the issue itself. If you had bothered reading, you would realize that my proposed CD changes leave them above the CD for CS already (with the exception of MI in an ideal situation), so this wouldn’t affect their synergy with CS. Mimic also only works on utility skills, not elites. On top of that, you completely dismissed any and all people who don’t own HoT for whatever reason.

The cooldowns on these skills are way too high for the low impact they have when you use them. Instead of buffing the skills, I am just proposing that the CDs are lowered to be much more reasonable so that these skills are actually elite-like. As opposed to now, where 2 of the 3 core mesmer elites are actually worse than our utility/weapon skills.

for PVE if you don’t own HOT you don’t need the spec anyways.
for PVP there are builds perfectly fine without the need of chronomancer trait line. beside if you don’t own HOT you are not taking the game seriously and you don’t deserve full content.
CDs are fine anyway.

“If you don’t own HoT then you don’t deserve skills without kitten cooldowns”

What a kitten attitude man. The CDs are not fine, you only think they are because you benefit from being able to use CS

As it stands GW2 has the worst elite/ultimate type of skill I have seen in this vein of games. Having played a couple of MMOs, MOBAs and Overwatch their ult is like devastating if placed right (being able to destroy the whole enemy team). Like every 2nd elite is a crapfest, take Tornado for example or Elixir X. What the hell were they thinking?