Guild Wars 2

I’m still hoping for an option to disable the display of the backpacks alltogether. If it’s for balance reasons, simply let us disable them for ourselves, other can still see them.

PinCushion.7390:

Aether McLoud.1975:

This is a computer game, of course nothing in it is hard to do. Compared to all the other professions though, ele and engi are definitely harder to play.

I find Elementalist and Engineer to be about the same difficulty level as driving a stick-shift car.

Which, to be fair, is asking too much of about 90% of the american population.

/flameshield=on

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

LeGi.3921:

I even started playing PvE again because there you see new things from time to time (living world).

Many PvP-Players searching for alternatives to fight boredom.

raises hand

Or to actually use weapons/specs outside of the 1 viable weapon/spec for each class in pvp.

Peter Buch.8071:

Second…. WHAT?

The current patch is an attempt to do small “shavings” to bring the class into line with these goals, in the same way we tried to “shave” the Ele numerous times, rather than “nerfing it from orbit”. Are all Ele specs equally viable in all game types? No. Is this ok? Yes. Staff can see play in one game type while D/D or S/D see play in others. As we’ve said, we’ll split skills/weapons more and more in the variuos game types, but each time we split a skill, it gives us more update work down the road. We have to be very prudent when we split skills.

Seriously, are you kidding me?
ArenaNet promised to make several VIABLE builds for every class in all parts of the game, not one kitten build you have to go for in the single parts of the game. Do you – s e r i o u s l y – want to force every profession, especially the elementalist, to have a completly different build for pvp, WvW and pve because otherwise you can’t do a kitten?

That explains definitly how you managed to scrue up the balance in the entire game. You should get some competent people.

Yeah it’s actually a completely ridiculous answer. Every weapon and build should be equally viable in any gametype. Or at least that should be the goal the balancing team strifes towards. But now it’s actually “Well this class has 1 viable weapon and spec in pve, and another weapon and spec in pvp, this class is COMPLETELY BALANCED!”

Zelyhn.8069:

For one dagger heal 5, you can throw 2 scepter water 3 or four dagger water 2, that makes dagger water 5 pretty crappy in terms of heal.
That’s why I use the focus …

Yes, what makes dagger water 5 good is the condition removal.

jportell.2197:

Aether McLoud.1975:

jportell.2197:

Aether McLoud.1975:

Archaon.6245:

Jasher.6580:

With the shift in the meta, having a Mesmer on your team flat out gimps you in competitive play. How can we fix this?

Left mesmer atm and went back to thief and bunker guardian, waiting for it being viable again…with no stability or condition removal and opmancers everywhere you’re pretty much a dead player walking (And if you try to go let’s say, condition dmg, there’s no reason to bring a mesmer when you can get a fear to win necro instead, same for bunker…there are other classes way better than mesmers @ this)…portal alone is not enough to justify a mesmer in your team atm..gj anet, see you again next patch…maybe..40 sec cd on nullfield (And if you bring it you already lost burst/survivability/support) with necros spamming wells with a kittenload of conditions+fear+other random kitten 24/7? Please…

Mesmers have stability…

And like every other class that “doesn’t have stability” mesmers comes from a mantra that has a long-ish cooldown 2.75s cast time and takes up a slot on their utlity bar that could go to condi removal. Unfortunately unlike all other classes if a mesmer is to even be considered for tournament they have only one utility slot that is left open to personal preference.

Because every other class has stability with only 2 seconds cooldown on their weapon skills? Get real. Everyone has to lose something to get stability, and most of the time that’s a utility slot or trait, and is on a long cooldown. Unless you’re a guardian then you fart stability.

Its more along the lines that if a mesmer gets stability they get that and nothin else. To even be considered for tourney teams mesmers only have one utility skill that is personal preference what do you not get about that?

Stability mantra can be used 2 times in a row, breaks stuns, and only has a low cooldown of 25 seconds. That’s the lowest cooldown out of all stability skills, guardian included.

Also, to even be considered in a tourney team,

- elementalist need lightning flash and mistform, leaving only 1 utility slot for personal preference
- engineers need elixir R and bombkit, leaving only 1 utility slot for personal preference,
…

Maybe you get the drift.

jportell.2197:

Aether McLoud.1975:

Archaon.6245:

Jasher.6580:

With the shift in the meta, having a Mesmer on your team flat out gimps you in competitive play. How can we fix this?

Left mesmer atm and went back to thief and bunker guardian, waiting for it being viable again…with no stability or condition removal and opmancers everywhere you’re pretty much a dead player walking (And if you try to go let’s say, condition dmg, there’s no reason to bring a mesmer when you can get a fear to win necro instead, same for bunker…there are other classes way better than mesmers @ this)…portal alone is not enough to justify a mesmer in your team atm..gj anet, see you again next patch…maybe..40 sec cd on nullfield (And if you bring it you already lost burst/survivability/support) with necros spamming wells with a kittenload of conditions+fear+other random kitten 24/7? Please…

Mesmers have stability…

And like every other class that “doesn’t have stability” mesmers comes from a mantra that has a long-ish cooldown 2.75s cast time and takes up a slot on their utlity bar that could go to condi removal. Unfortunately unlike all other classes if a mesmer is to even be considered for tournament they have only one utility slot that is left open to personal preference.

Because every other class has stability with only 2 seconds cooldown on their weapon skills? Get real. Everyone has to lose something to get stability, and most of the time that’s a utility slot or trait, and is on a long cooldown. Unless you’re a guardian then you fart stability.

Actually we only have 10k base hp

Archaon.6245:

Jasher.6580:

With the shift in the meta, having a Mesmer on your team flat out gimps you in competitive play. How can we fix this?

Left mesmer atm and went back to thief and bunker guardian, waiting for it being viable again…with no stability or condition removal and opmancers everywhere you’re pretty much a dead player walking (And if you try to go let’s say, condition dmg, there’s no reason to bring a mesmer when you can get a fear to win necro instead, same for bunker…there are other classes way better than mesmers @ this)…portal alone is not enough to justify a mesmer in your team atm..gj anet, see you again next patch…maybe..40 sec cd on nullfield (And if you bring it you already lost burst/survivability/support) with necros spamming wells with a kittenload of conditions+fear+other random kitten 24/7? Please…

Mesmers have stability…

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Batmang.5421:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Batmang.5421:

I get the impression that the people asking for lifeforce at the beginning of games have failed to utilize the class to it’s fullest potential which makes it a L2P issue.

In the case of stealth-bursts this is not the case. The only thing a necromancer can do is plague-form to survive such a burst. Also as a guardian myself, it is very hard to survive stealth openers. It’s more about lucky dodging and block-prediciton than anyting else. In this specific scenario it has nothing to do with L2P.

Simple fact is necro have the ability to mitigate A TON of burst as shown in the video. Very close in comparison to a lot of other classes that have similar damage output. I’m personally not against stealth openers because I find it interesting but that’s just my opinion. My post was not to justify stealth openers but to provide evidence that necro has the ability to mitigate burst damage.

For normal bursts absolutely, but not for stealth-openers. There is no viable way to generate life-force before. Only thing you can do is put marks and you hope you gonna survive it.

So necro has a hardcounter just like every other class? Preposterous.

Short answer: No.

Long Answer: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

snaplemouton.1294:

Neko.9021:

Yes. Bundles now use your stats, and work with sigils and everything.

Lightning Hammer is still probably really bad in PvP formats, however. It’s more of a PvE thing.

Also, remember that Lightning Flash no longer removes stun either.

Ugh, I really should sit down and read every patch notes then.
Still I prefer Lightning Flash to Cleansing Fire. In such a fast paced game, switching position in the blink of an eye can mess up the enemy player pretty hard.

As for Lightning hammer, I’ll sure as hell give it a try next time get the chance if they finally fixed the bundles.

Lightning flash can still be used while CCed though it doesn’t remove the CC after the teleport. Also, Lightning Hammer is godmode pve

Aberrant.6749:

Aether McLoud.1975:

Victoitor.2917:

Remove current #3 and add fireworks with no cooldown.

Since #3 is so useless due to the long cooldown, how about this change? At least we have a cheerful death.

If the enemy doesn’t start stomping you the moment you go down, if you wait for the last moment to use #2, you’ll be able to use #3 to counter the next stomp.

…unless you get blocked by anything what so ever… and now compare that to thief/mes/guard/ele/necro/ranger downed skills. Heck… at least warrior 3 lets you get back up and rally if you kill something… or reposition yourself for a post death res.

Noone besides eles and mesmers has a 100% chance to prevent the first stomp.

Also warriors die after their #3 downed skill unless traited for it. And when they die the die, they don’t go back to downed state.

snaplemouton.1294:

Neko.9021:

It seems really bland because Eles are the most spoiled class when it comes to condition removal.

That’s why I’m not gonna be using it.
Especially since speccing into cantrip often means you are going to get regen condition removal.
I’d sure gladly take cleansing fire on any of my other character, (Aside from my mesmer.) but it’s on my elementalist so I’m judging from my elementalist point of view.

Regen only removes a condition every 5 seconds which can mean death in pvp if you don’t use an active condition removal skill on top of it.

XII.9401:

TGSlasher.1458:

Volrath.1473:

I don’t what the other devs to post in the forum, there are community coordenators for that.

I want devs to PLAY THE STUPID GAME and realize how broken it is. THEN i would like the devs to FIX IT before my THIRD guild disappears from the game….

We ported our PvP Aion guild to Guild Wars 2, only me and my friend left now. Funny, they played Aion PvP religiously but wouldn’t give sPvP a go, only played WvW all the time. My current guild I joined due to it being mostly oceanic and PvP based, yet, they all seem to be PvE now.

spvp in this game is a glorified series of successive duels.

No healers: Lack of group synergy=boring pvp and OP classes that can do everything.

I don’t blame them since wvw small scale adds a bit of unpredictability to the game though not enough to counter the zerging.

No healers is the best thing this game did for pvp.

Aberrant.6749:

Aether McLoud.1975:

Aberrant.6749:

Aether McLoud.1975:

Holm.7058:

It’s funny you complain about thief roaming when they’re possibly the worst class 1v1. They’re very good at sniping dollys but that’s about it.

Oh is it opposite day already?

So… you trying to say that you think thief is possibly the best 1v1 class?

Yes. Because if you’re not braindead you won’t ever lose 1vX as a thief because of stealth. On top of that they are a really good 1v1 class even without stealth.

Please go try to fight a decent mes/eng/guard as a thief. Thief is too predictable to be a top tier 1v1 class. Running away doesn’t equal winning btw… that’s a loss.

Bad thieves are predictable. And I regularly fight good mesmers/engis/guards on a thief. They all die like the kitten they are.

Neko.9021:

It was arguably far too powerful for what it did. Cleansing 3 conditions, applying burn, and breaking stun on a 45 second CD with the ability to, if traited, remove a fourth and grant regen and vigor was a bit much.

It’s still used by triple cantrip bunkers and quite powerful still. It was simply slowed down, for game balance.

Maybe it was too powerful, especially traited, but IMHO it is way too bland now. Remove 3 conditions and burn (which most of the time doesn’t apply when you need to use it) is really uninspiring. It should have something special now, like a blast finisher or a fire field or something.

Aberrant.6749:

Aether McLoud.1975:

Holm.7058:

It’s funny you complain about thief roaming when they’re possibly the worst class 1v1. They’re very good at sniping dollys but that’s about it.

Oh is it opposite day already?

So… you trying to say that you think thief is possibly the best 1v1 class?

Yes. Because if you’re not braindead you won’t ever lose 1vX as a thief because of stealth. On top of that they are a really good 1v1 class even without stealth.

Thobek.1730:

Xeph.4513:

Stealth, is another issue in this game and plays right into the same category, it’s just so difficult to punish, and there is no real other counter for stealth than another stealth, there is no intelligent play behind; it’s just a free “do what I want” card.
If there was a reveal mechanic or a way to counter it, then you would see a lot more intelligent play and thought process put behind stealthing, but at the current state of the game there just isn’t.

Amen to that!

I’ve been crying, QQ’ing, whining little a baby since launch how stupid this is. No counter and basically a huge advantage is bad design. It was originally designed to used sparringly as one dev stated but its now completely spammable (if you are a thief, but not if any other class)

Stealth is tough to balance as no game I know does it well. I heard DAoC did a good job of it and recognised it for the powerful trait that it was. Things like you couldn’t restealth if you had line of sight. At the moment thieves have invisibility not stealth.

This, so much. Stealth is ok on 30-40 seconds cooldown skills as a defensive or getaway mechanic. But once it becomes spammable every second it becomes incredibly OP. IMHO the whole problem with thief stealth is pistol 5 + HS/Shortbow2 spam and Cloak and Dagger.

Holm.7058:

It’s funny you complain about thief roaming when they’re possibly the worst class 1v1. They’re very good at sniping dollys but that’s about it.

Oh is it opposite day already?

Victoitor.2917:

Remove current #3 and add fireworks with no cooldown.

Since #3 is so useless due to the long cooldown, how about this change? At least we have a cheerful death.

If the enemy doesn’t start stomping you the moment you go down, if you wait for the last moment to use #2, you’ll be able to use #3 to counter the next stomp.

Or an utility/weaponskill that actually makes condition ele viable. Something like “for 10 seconds all your bleeds also apply burning and poison” – something that gives us access to more than 1 condition in a single element.

Brutal Arts.6307:

She’s good at attempting to communicate with players but I’d rather have an equal measure of devs that fix things and devs that do forum PR.

That said It would be great to have more PR reps for other sections of the forums addressing player concerns. on such a regular basis

‘Tis true. I can’t fathom how some classes (ele for example) still have bugs that have been in the game since launch or even before that. How can you ever truly balance skills and classes if half of them are still buggy as hell?

JonathanSharp.7094:

People keep asking for mobility on the Necro, and again, by design, this is something we’re going to keep to a minimum. We will continue to make sure they get more attrition tools (Deathshroud is a main point here), the ability to manipulate boons/conditions, and the ability to control opponents.

The current patch is an attempt to do small “shavings” to bring the class into line with these goals, in the same way we tried to “shave” the Ele numerous times, rather than “nerfing it from orbit”. Are all Ele specs equally viable in all game types? No. Is this ok? Yes. Staff can see play in one game type while D/D or S/D see play in others. As we’ve said, we’ll split skills/weapons more and more in the variuos game types, but each time we split a skill, it gives us more update work down the road. We have to be very prudent when we split skills.

Same thing with the Necro. They have a few different viable builds in different types of content, and we’re trying to make sure they continue to see play in various roles spread throughout the various gametypes.

But seriously, OP, wait until you play the patch and THEN update this. I’d love to know what you think….but as Allie posted theorycrafting is pretty hard for us to make informed decisions with. Let us know how they feel in game.

With much love from Chinajoy,

Chap

Do you think you’ve overshot a little with the Ride the Lightning nerfs? Especially in PVE/WVW? With bunker ele in the state they are now, don’t you think a 20 seconds base cooldown and 1200 range would be balanced, without the double cooldown thingy? Or maybe 900 range 20 seconds cd, moves less with cripple, moves more with swiftness, like the new engineer rocket boots?
I’d love to have a dev’s opinion on the current RTL, because what you did to the skill over the last few month was the most severe nerfs to a single skill I’ve ever seen in any MMO, and I think especially the double cooldown was too much, because it takes away so much fun from ele roaming when out of combat. Also it really feels like RTL was “nerfed from orbit”

Jae.5138:

the issue was that the mobility on elementalist was simply TOO much. They could disengage TOO easily. They could come in, do whatever they want to do, and the RTL would simply put way too much distance in between you and the elementalist to do anything. It’s a good thing that it was nerfed. You don’t like it? Anyone who wasn’t an elementalist sighed in relief.

Sounds like warriors, thieves, mesmers or engineers to me…

Jae.5138:

Aether McLoud.1975:

Jae.5138:

Oh, Delius. This thread basically sums up to ‘elem was fun when it was op, but not any more’

I realize that the mobility got hit but you have to understand that it was TOO MUCH prior to the nerf. Elementalist still has easy access to swiftness in both pve and pvp, as well as the RTL.

My point is, mobility equals less downtime equals more fun.
And seeing as other classes have skills comparable to RTL (some even better) on ~12 seconds cooldowns, they should have nerfed us in other ways to keep RTL on a reasonably low cooldown.

Fun for you, not fun for others.

And why are you making comparison to other classes? some classes will always have more mobility than others. Why do you feel that elementalists should have the best or close to the best mobility? Elementalists already pull out tons of cc, as well as healing and damage.

“tons” of cc… we have less than most other classes on longer cooldowns than most other classes.

Also, are you really arguing that downtime is fun?

Motoko.2875:

Aether McLoud.1975:

pic

Something I hope you and any GW2 PvP fan boy might have accepted by now is that it is the majority opinion in regards to the PvP.

There is a reason GW2 is non-existent as an e-sport and there is a reason that the PvP player base suffered a relatively huge decline after release.

Ah so because I like GW2 combat system more than GW1 overall I have to be a “fan boy”. There’s 3 fallacies in your “argument”. Ad hominem, strawman, appeal to majority. L2argue.

Lanimal.6541:

Everyone knows mesmer has almost as good stealth as thieves now

LOL mesmer stealth is nowhere near close to the OPness that is thief stealth. The problem of thief stealth isn’t the utility skills with reasonable cooldown giving stealth, it’s Pistol 5 + HS spam and to a lesser extend CnD that gives extremely long stealth uptime with no cooldown.

TGSlasher.1458:

Kodiak.3281:

innocent ouarior.1954:

Bloodmage spec (which sounds 10 times cooler than Condimentalist), that being full Rampager perma 25bleed+burn using does incredibly good single target PvE damage as long as your team doesnt use much bleeds and burn. With sharing poison Thief or Poison Filed supplied its even more impressive.

Of course its a very niche.

Yea if you can go Asura for the Radiation Field plus stack condition duration you can get a really crazy source of Poison. Almost makes me wish I hadn’t deleted my Asura Elementalist for a Human one. As it is I tend to run with Reaper of Grenth instead but that’s a huge recast for limited duration, but also is extra Chill.

There is also an onswap sigil to get poison, though I assume you would use the on crit bleed one for the bleeds when not in earth. I use the onswap poison in PvP, very usefull

I thought all the “on swap, your next attack does X” sigils are bugged with attunement switching?

This is a computer game, of course nothing in it is hard to do. Compared to all the other professions though, ele and engi are definitely harder to play.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Just wanted to jump in and say I’m watching this, but I didn’t want to derail this thread.

I think the “high level” and the “casual” are equally important to the health and life of the game.

The truth is that we need to balance for both, and we need to use 1 set of #‘s for THREE game types, which all have “high” and “casual” markets. So, in a sense, the balance team is balancing for 6 different types of players, all while trying to keep the #’s as consistent as possible for all game types.

Keep the other game types in mind and thanks for being cool/calm/collected when discussing such a volatile issue.

Do you think you’ve overshot a little with the Ride the Lightning nerfs? Especially in PVE/WVW? With bunker ele in the state they are now, don’t you think a 20 seconds base cooldown and 1200 range would be balanced, without the double cooldown thingy? Or maybe 900 range 20 seconds cd, moves less with cripple, moves more with swiftness, like the new engineer rocket boots?

I’d love to have a dev’s opinion on the current RTL, because what you did to the skill over the last few month was the most severe nerfs to a single skill I’ve ever seen in any MMO, and I think especially the double cooldown was too much, because it takes away so much fun from ele roaming when out of combat.

Jae.5138:

Oh, Delius. This thread basically sums up to ‘elem was fun when it was op, but not any more’

I realize that the mobility got hit but you have to understand that it was TOO MUCH prior to the nerf. Elementalist still has easy access to swiftness in both pve and pvp, as well as the RTL.

My point is, mobility equals less downtime equals more fun.
And seeing as other classes have skills comparable to RTL (some even better) on ~12 seconds cooldowns, they should have nerfed us in other ways to keep RTL on a reasonably low cooldown.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Aether McLoud.1975, thanks for your input! As we just shipped a patch today, I suspect we will want to wait and see how the meta adapts before thinking about making any changes. Maybe with the changes we put out, bunker eles will feel better to play. Give it a little time, and maybe we can revisit this.

Thanks for the reply. Have the devs thought about only using the double-cooldown-if-not-hit feature in pvp? I feel 40 seconds is barely… bearable… in pvp because the maps aren’t as big, but in pve and wvw where maps are HUGE 40 seconds out of combat RTL really hurts the fun of playing a dagger ele. Getting around the map faster equals less downtime and more action time, so more fun overall

I don’t think having out of combat RTL be 20 seconds base cooldown, and only using the 40 seconds when you’re in combat and not hitting something would be unbalanced (even in pvp).

I think active communication with the community is the key to a happy community because it feels heard, especially in pvp where balance is such a picky topic. So more comments from arenanet are always welcome.

So, while you’re here actively discussing, could you answer one quick question?
How do the devs think of current Ride the Lightning? It was so immensely fun with lower cooldown and what brought a lot of people to roll an ele at launch (it was the deciding factor for me between ele and engi at least). It looks awesome, it sounds awesome, it was awesome.
But then pvp balance came and killed it.
Now that bunker eles aren’t anything close to OP anymore, how about some love for RTL? Cooldown reduction? Going from 15 seconds 1550 range to 40 seconds 1200 range is the most severe nerf to a single ability in any MMO I’ve ever played.

Dalo.3941:

I have no problems hitting targets. It’s good as it is now. A skill that does so much damage shouldn’t be easy to hit. If a target is getting on your flanks or behind your doing it wrong anyway.

LOL “so much damage”. LOL “should not be easy to hit”. I present you: backstab. No opportunity cost, no resource cost, no cooldown, extremely easy to hit.

Also you don’t even seem to use the skill. It fails to hit when the target is right in front of you, but standing on a tiny rock. It fails to hit when the target is strafing. It fails to hit a FRAKKING lot.

I’d love stuff that focused on us combining our 4 elements into more massive attacks/defenses.

Or of course, an avatar state elite.

BlackBeard.2873:

Edit: apparently (45)s w/o the parentheses is filtered. I don’t know why.

Because it’s leetspeak for buttocks (A = 4, S = 5)

Zelyhn.8069:

Stop using daggers, they won’t fix anything until we use other weapons.

Well 99% of ele players don’t use focus yet it still isn’t fixed :/

Motoko.2875:

GW1 and GW2 both give you the ability to PvP fully geared and auto-level 80.

GW1 at least had templates you could save builds with though.

lettucemode.3789:

Combat system is second to none. Dodging is such a cool mechanic, it adds a new layer of tactics to fights. The various boons and conditions create a lot of different battle situations to consider. And being able to max out a tree with less than half of your spec points means there’s lots of build diversity within a class.

I feel like you haven’t ever played GW1 PvP. And if you have, not at a high level.

GW2 combat doesn’t come close to GW1 combat.

Dodging is a cool mechanic? Okay, it has its perks, but what about GW1 lack of jumping and bodyblocking mechanics? Those created such a level of diversity in tactics that GW2 can’t even compare.

Boons and conditions? They are a lot simpler than the combination of GW1 enchantments, stances, conditions, and hexes.

Maxing out a tree with half your spec for build diversity? You really need to look up the character combinations of having secondary classes.

lettucemode.3789:

Combat system is second to none. Dodging is such a cool mechanic, it adds a new layer of tactics to fights. The various boons and conditions create a lot of different battle situations to consider. And being able to max out a tree with less than half of your spec points means there’s lots of build diversity within a class.

I completely second this. I love the combat system and all it’s mechanics. Also that everone has the same access to gear in pvp. And the trait system – while a lot of single traits could use bugfixes/buffs – is by design really awesome too and gives you a lot of little decisions.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Arheundel.6451:

2. Consider the creative mind of the playerbase.
Sometimes, there are really good builds that are not discovered for months on end. This is affected by our current playerbase, as well as a revolving meta.
This is not meant as a slight, but the truth is that sometimes things are changing so quickly that you guys just don’t have time to explore new builds and find that one gem that has escaped others.
3. Allow previous changes to settle.
This ties in to the previous two listed. The balance changes we make are very deliberate and calculated. This means that we need to give you guys time to find the gems that we have put in the game, and then allow the meta to adapt to your creative mind.

Sadly the majority of the player-base does not want to adapt, they find a build and that is it, they want to run with that particular build over and over again , as soon as they lose to a counter build..they’ll come to complain on the forum, while maybe using a different set up, runes, utilities they would be perfectly able to beat that counter build.
To put it simply not everybody follow a strategical approach, the majority only wish for “a build to rule them all” .

Aww, that’s not fair! I think a little more credit is due. Consider this though: the players that spend their time arguing on the forums are maybe not the ones spending all their time in the game trying to find that innovative build. Not saying that’s always the case, but it’s yet another thing we have to consider. The amount of active participants on these forums is actually an extremely low percentage of our playerbase. That’s not to say we ignore them.

Heyyy, while you’re here actively discussing, could you answer one quick question?

How do the devs think of current Ride the Lightning? It was so immensely fun with lower cooldown and what brought a lot of people to roll an ele at launch (it was the deciding factor for me between ele and engi at least). It looks awesome, it sounds awesome, it was awesome.

But then pvp balance came and killed it.

Now that bunker eles aren’t anything close to OP anymore, how about some love for RTL? Cooldown reduction? Going from 15 seconds 1550 range to 40 seconds 1200 range is the most severe nerf to a single ability in any MMO I’ve ever played.

Well they nerfed RTL so much now it has about the same chance to hit as firegrab. That’s balance according to anet.

The most fun thing we had was RTL and that is gone now. That was actually one of the reasons I rolled ele at start instead of engineer because I value mobility above all (because mobility = less down time more action more fun). Now my engineer is more mobile than my ele

katniss.6735:

Focus changes? lol

Does “Glyph of Renewal: Reduced the cast time from 4.25-seconds to 3.25 seconds” mean that we can finish the heal faster, but remove less conditions as a result?

Hint: It’s not ether renewal.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Aether McLoud.1975:

JonPeters.5630:

Among other benefits the stealth on hunters also let’s you cast the beginning of barrage without detection.

So it’s ok for rangers to have stealth now, but eles cannot have mobility? My double standard sense is tingeling.

Most elementalists run D/D, which is already mobile and tanky enough. I don’t think they need a buff to mobility, tyvm.

1 skill on a 40 seconds cooldown does not equal mobility when everyone else has the same skill on 12 seconds cooldowns.

Mogar.9216:

ditch the zerg and learn to roam. Zerg is boring , roaming is not rewarding if you are after wxp but fun.

Only on thieves.

JonPeters.5630:

Among other benefits the stealth on hunters also let’s you cast the beginning of barrage without detection.

So it’s ok for rangers to have stealth now, but eles cannot have mobility? My double standard sense is tingeling.

Paavotar.3971:

I don’t think the problem lays in the norn elite skill, but rather in the professions own elites. If they rather take elite that has long CD only for its stealth and dash then theres definetly wrong with the professions own Elites.

BING BING BING BING BING We have a winner!

Peter Buch.8071:

Yes, because buffs to underpowered skills (which we’re not even sure if they’re still worth using or not, and if they are, they’ll take the place of other key skills) is ground breaking. And I didn’t know that a single stealth skill is now suddenly going to make Ranger a “perma stealth” profession.

Let’s not forget that necromancers were nerfed today, or that rangers and mesmers were nerfed last patch while elementalists have gotten many, many buffs there.

But hey, it’s easier to play the victim card. Oh noes, they don’t care about us! Oh noes! Remember those popular pvp heartseeker thief builds that could burst someone in 2 seconds out of nowhere? Fresh Air elementalists can now do the same while being at range and offering superior aoe damage and party support. Oh noes, we’re so weak!

1. 3 seconds stealth on a skill with 12 seconds cooldown results in stealth for 25% of the time + buffed dmg due to the synergizing first strike.

33% actually because they can reduce the cooldown to 9 seconds.

25 point minor fire trait: Upon attuning to fire, make a smoke field around you.

Makes way more sense than shooting someone with an arrow and suddenly, stealth!