About the “thief problem”
First, FA ele isn’t all that bad against thief in 1v1 situations NOW, you have enough burst to finish them, and if you don’t make many mistakes can win the fight. The only reason you lose that fight is because they can disengage and bleed you of CD’s. Weaver gives you both hard mitigation (barrier, evades in twist of fate), more soft mitigation (more prot, more weakness if traited), and more frequent, high damage pressure.
One of the major downsides of weaver from a counter-burst perspective is that it will be VERY hard to quick fire-swap + phoenix someone to 1-shot an overzealous thief. It might be able to be played around, smart rotating of your on-demand defenses and having access to burst.
I think FA ele will be stronger relative to thief than it is now, but it still most likely won’t have a place.
MORE LIKELY, however, if we look at history, is that ele competes for a damage-oriented bruiser-type role, which is less reliant on instant-access to specific CD’s like obsidian flesh but instead has a long rotation of defenses. I can see two great trait combos here:
- Air, arcana, weaver with either d/x or sw/x
- Water, arcana, weaver with sw/x
Thanks to some synergies in air and weaver, this is actually both offensively and defensively a great combo (counter condis with tons of superspeed stripping condis every 1/2s, great for kiting when needed, great pressure from all those air lighting strikes). Arcana gives you protection, and all the other things it always has, plus allows you to swap more often. With D/X, you now have a water field from the fire/water dual skill (also an evade), and a blast in either air/water or water/water.
More likely, sword/x is going to be the combo to use, as new-weapon skills are basically always more powerful than base-game weapons, and most viable pvp specs use their new weapon. Sword has a long (4s) water combo field on water 2, that you can blast with basically any element, and multi-blast if you attunement dance properly. The dual skills have a lot of ways to get barrier and other mitigation, as well as good ways to heal. If you have the water/arcana combo then you always have great options to cleanse, and weaver gives some really good bruiser-type traits. This trait combo will most likely feel like the old d/d ele on steroids with souped-up dodge rolls carrying you to victory behind cleanses, blasts, and barrier.
(edited by BlackBeard.2873)
Fresh Air Ele is going to be pretty godly. With a grandmaster trait that removes condies every half a second when you have superspeed… such a thing removes the need to rely on water to remove condies. The Weaver also offers some interesting defensive skills, so you could potentially have a very well rounded Fresh Air ele, a vastly improved version of what you can have right now.
Ranger’s Soulbeast on the other hand… it seems very bland and their GM traits are utter trash.
Fresh air will be thief fodder still. Theory craft 95% of builds and the chances are thief will make them not viable on its own. You cant avoid thieves as they are fast so if your spec is bad vs thieves then you cant play it.
Doesnt matter what fresh air ele tries to do when they get 1 shot by thieves whilst being perma stunned
Indeed, pretty much. Yet, we still don’t know all of the dual skills or the Sword skills, there may be something there that might help them against thieves.
Also, Scourge doesn’t seem all that good at first glance to be honest. Poor mobility + no stability + no Shourd HP = …
Will the new Barrier make up for it? We don’t know yet.Scourge and a fresh air ele will not be viable due to thief and mesmer. It doesnt matter what skills are added to these classes, they are conceptually just bad for anything other than fringe roles.
Barrier could be amazing and it wont matter . Thieves and mesmers will be invulnerable so often you cant hit them. A thief can just dodge around when you pop barrier and let it run out naturally and then spike you 100-0 in about 1 second. Same with ele, it doesnt matter if the fresh air spec has some amazing cds for protection because a thief or mesmer will be invulnerable (evade) constantly and then just spike them when the cds run out with a bunch of stuns.
While I think there is an uphill fight for ele to be an actual dps role, weaver MAY make fresh air scepter/focus actually closer to competitive. There are some decent utility skills that apply good, hard mitigation (stone resonance gives you barrier, twist of fate evades, breaks stun, and superspeeds, arcane shield still blocks, and lighting flash still alows gtfo). Besides great defense, the main thing fresh air ele was missing was just enough damage and mobility to make it competitive for its role. Weaver increases the damage a LOT with all those lightning strikes, and increases mobility by attuning to air even more often.
Fresh air can already 1v1 mesmers/thieves when needed, they just can’t really do enough, often enough in teamfights to compete with a thief at actually executing targets. With weaver, ele might fill this role just fine, with enough “extras” brought to the table (projectile hate, heals, cleanses through water) to actually be viable.
I can also see a bruiser weaver spec working, that takes every defensive trait it possibly can and recovers the old d/d brusier playstyle that has frequent constant barrier, cleanses, self-heals that help the team a bit, and good, constant damage.
Of course, more than likely, there will be 1-2 extremely broken specs that just ruin pvp for a good quarter to half the year by being so hilariously OP that potentially interesting specs never see the light of day, all because ANet’s balance cycle is hilariously inadequate. At least theorycrafting and testing will be fun!
Rune of Dwayna does not work with Cleansing Water (and never has).
Good to know…I figured they would have fixed the bug by now, but then again arcana still doesn’t properly reduce the time to precharge overloads either (only the tooltip is modified).
That being said, for a support-ish bruiser build, I REALLY like menders with rune of the herald. Herald gives some extra toughness, which is very valuable with mender’s, and getting an extra aoe protection is excellent since the elemental shielding was nerfed. This is doubly true if you take arcana over earth.
What it should do is display the winning team with standard models view removed…as we all know fashion wars >> pvp.
This one is just for funzies, but is surprising potent at catching people off-guard:
I present…BURN ELE:
Basic idea is: pop glyph and arcane power in fire, burning speed, drakes breath, arcane heal….and they melt, esp b/c people don’t expect an ele to do damage, and especially not to do condi damage.
Enjoy!
This is a nice start of a build, but it feels just a bit too hodge-podge. They REALLY need to give back some sort of amulet that has some toughness + healing power.
A few notes:
- Rune of dwayna is way better against condi, making every use of your heal another aoe cleanse. It also gives you the same healing power.
-Rune of the Herald is a good general bruiser choice, adding extra protection time that is also aoe. This also makes up for lack of shared prot from not having elemental shielding, increasing your effectiveness as a team support in a pinch.
Why not merge them as baseline in a “Core” Elite spec based on the profession mechanic by making it a minor in that line. This would nerf basically all HoT builds (except ele I guess, but that has the problem of tempest being arcana++, and could be adjusted so that tempest has 15s attunement recharge baseline), and open up alternative builds by making elite specs always have to “give up” something to be taken. It would also allow for easier balance, as you could preserve “Core” builds by moving problematic traits into the “core” spec line, while also having elite specs present a completely different playstyle.
With warrior, that means you pick between frequent weapon swaps or going crazy on the burst skills.
Eles pick between faster attunement swaps (10s vs 15s) or having overloads.
Mesmers pick between more frequent shatters that are powered up (and maybe put deceptive evasion into illusions line) vs. having cont. split and chronophantasma.
Necros pick between better LF gen. capabilities and regular shroud vs. reaper that sustains its own LF a bit better baseline.
Thieves pick between a burst-steal specialist or a dodge-heavy monkey.
Engies pick between better toolbelt skills or having that gyro.
Rangers pick between more powerful pets or getting astral force and healing.
Revs pick between greater utility on legend-swaps and glint + boon-play.
Guards choose between base virtues that can be quite powerful for the team (esp. when traited) and DH virtues that are more selfish but have some extra utility.
There should be no free lunch.
Not even a token increase in shatterstone?!?! I mean, don’t they realize that scepter is AT LEAST 1 stack of vuln away from being viable.
I mean, taking away like 30% of the damage from sigils won’t hurt scepter ele burst all that much…now it can just…you know……I really hope you know, because I dont!
Support ele will also be very hurt by these changes. Reduction in protection on auras (when eles only really shared 2 auras from shouts) + reduction in healing from wash the pain away, combined with what appear only small nerfs to support druid and none to support rev, make it a quite questionable choice. Perhaps if you drop earth for arcana, you could build a bruiser-type build, but that is highly unlikely to work as there isn’t a viable toughness/healing power amulet.
I guess eles are stuck being just a worse version of heal-bot. Enjoy being boring!
For those who think Shatterstone is weak and it is weaker than the auto attack on water, have you considered the vulnerability? It’s 15 seconds. You can hit someone with Shatterstone while LoS’d unlike auto attack in water, and you can hit more consistently with Shatterstone because it isn’t a projectile with a projectile hate meta (War, Druid, Necro, Thief, Ele, Scrapper, and Guard all have projectile blocks in their meta). Shatterstone can also hit while facing away from your opponent AND it can hit 5 opponents at the same time. If used more than once, you have a 10% damage buff immediately that lasts for ~10 seconds. Also, not EVERY skill has to be amazingly good like Magnetic Wave and Comet.
I think you are missing the point about why shatterstone is never worth using: it can simply be strafed out of (and in fact is almost always avoided if the target is moving at all. Even if you predict their positioning, its just 1 step to get out and avoid completely. For that reason, shatterstone is basically a 0 damage skill. To add insult…when it does hit, all I get is something about as strong as an auto-attack with some vuln (that will get cleansed before it runs its course anyway)? For how strong the skill is, it needs to hit even easier than Mind Stab on mesmer GS. In fact, even on the short CD, with how hard it is to land…it should almost 1-shot the opponent. To put it another way…the problem isn’t the damage, its the time it takes to hit.
Dragon’s tooth has the same problem, but at least it hits kinda hard in the right build. It is still rarely worth casting in pvp (again b/c 1s cast time… wtf?!?!). The drop is so slow that people are often ressed and already away by the time it would drop, and that is when you cast it the second the guy goes down.
Of course, Anet won’t really fix the skills by making them hit fast enough/lowering the cast time. They will just add another stack of vuln to shatterstone and call it a day…if they ever even do anything at all.
My reasons:
Pace of combat: HoT Powercreep RUINED the flow of combat. GW2 used to have a slower-paced combat, and timing important dodges and skills was how you won. Nowadays, most builds can just chain hard defenses for an absurd period of time, and follow it up with short-CD bursts, that intelligent skill usage isn’t all that important because you can just try again in 5s if you miss. To make matters worse, every build was given so much passive and hard mitigation that stats barely impact defense on most classes. Too many invulns, passives, and auto-procs make combat terrible. Remember when condi builds slowly won battles of attrition by building large stacks of damage then smartly covering them, and opponents had a limited set of cleanses that they had to time intelligently to combat it? Remember when strong defenses like blocks and invulns had REALLY long CD’s, so people didn’t just stack as many “ignore what my opponent is doing for Xs” skills? Remember when burst builds had to land important skills, and people counted dodges in order to get them off? Nowadays, its just all spam.
Balance: While balance is decent from the perspective of every class being playable in some build, balance is truly terrible in the terms of team compositions/roles. Remember when Anet designed with the concept of “roles and holes,” where any build had specific things it could do and specific things it was weak against (or they at least tried). Now, every viable build does just about everything, with only a few classes really having true weaknesses (necros to focus, revs to condi).
Build diversity: HoT power-creep made it such that every class only has builds that synergize with the elite spec, and other builds are SO MUCH worse that its laughable when someone brings them. Before HoT, off-meta builds had more weaknesses than meta builds, but also had very specific strengths that enabled them to succeed and win thanks to unfamiliarity. Usually off-meta builds that you fought could often win the first 1-2 encounters, and then the fight might even if you were able to figure out what they were packing and how you could play around it. With HoT, off-meta builds are just hilariously underpowered and I don’t even care to figure out what they build is packing…it just dies because it can’t spam defense forever followed up with high damage on a short CD.
Everyone would run cele if it was reintroduced. Have fun fighting cele warrior or cele reaper
I don’t think this is true. For the first ~2 years of the game there was a pvp cele amulet that had an equal number of stats to all 3-stat amulets, but was never taken because it was always better to specialize than be middling in all ways. Then they jacked cele up to have far superior total stat #’s (but less in each category) and everyone ran it because you lost too much by trying to be more angular. It essentially had as much defense as a defensive set (like clerics) with nearly as much total offensive stats as an offensive set (like zerker).
There is a balanced point somewhere in the middle of “equal to 3 (or 4) stat amulets and therefore useless” and “so statistically superior everyone runs it.”
I do agree there is a risk that this becomes a tank amulet, but really, removing balanced amulets like clerics and soldiers becuase they powercreeped hard mitigation with HoT was terrible for the game.
Quit being silly, we ALL know that shatterstone is just missing one more stack of vulnerability.
These are looking a little bit better, but a few concerns:
- Why do some sigils apply there effect on-swap (stagnation, revelation) as opposed to on your next attack after swapping. I think there is more counterplay if these proc on-next attack (aoe around target) as opposed to instantly.
- For sigils that have longer CD’s, is there any idea on how this will work with engie and ele (or warrior with fast hands), who will be 50% less efficient taking these sigils. For instance, something like a ranger can put escape and revelation on one weapon, then greater nullification and something else on the other weapon, and get 4 procs over a 20s period. Ele and engie, meanwhile, would be stuck with just 2 procs. Likewise, other on-swap effects have less control for these two classes.
- Duration sigils should not all be the same duration. 25% longer burn is WAY stronger than 25% longer vulnerability. Similarly, 25% longer bleeds doesn’t do as much for you as 25% longer burns, as burns are applied as a burst condi, while bleeds get built up and cleansed when there is a large stack.
- Purity, cleansing, and escape: This is a LOT of condition cleansing available. It is conceivable to remove up to 4 conditions from a single swap (slotting cleansing + escape) which really helps builds that might struggle with condis (something like druid will put these super-defensive sigils on their “now I just spam defensive evades” weapon set) and hurt condition builds who are already getting some of their free proc-bursts reduced?
Sure, let’s just completely kitten on the only high tier sPvP thief build…while not allowing the other sets to ever be comparable, or be viable at that skill level, because your balance team just doesn’t know how to handle and balance thief properly; nor have they learned over the course of almost 5 years now.
Except d/p thief, as is, relies on stealth only for opener, escape, and respositioning/sneaky decap. D/P thief doesn’t really rely on backstab for damage, as a single shadow-shot does almost as much damage.
If you are referring to reducing the burst available, then yes, this really hurts thief, who can 75-0 most builds now (maybe 60-0 if a heavy class with no invulns).
They might compensate thief by removing other class’s invulns/increasing CD’s, which would be a great trade. They can also, maybe, give some damage back to weapon skills if needed, as you no longer rely on huge hits+procs to kill.
Overall, it depends on how they balance it, but I sincerely feel like thief will still be fine. It’s mostly a +1/decap role now, and it will still be tops for that role after any change.
I very much like that you are reducing damage from sigils (as well as sustain from sigils), while keeping them interesting from a build perspective.
I personally think that you should have kept “Increase X duration by Y%” sigils, as they mean you are really trying to implement a solid strategy (bleeding opponents, chilling, burning, cc-ing, etc.). Similarly, giving 10% additional outgoing healing increases your build (at self-sacrifice) without being build or play-style defining. However, I don’t think 20% is right for every condi. 20% burning application is WAY stronger than 20% vuln application. I would also MUCH rather see opponents take these sigils as opposed to giving extra free procs that have just made condi builds bursty. In that vein, I am not a fan of geomancy, especially at 3 stacks.
Also, hydromancy as proposed will be a frequent pick at 2s, but stagnation (applies cripple) will never be picked at only 3s. A 2s chill not only slows MORE than the 3s cripple, it also messes up CD’s significantly.
I love that there is now a sigil that allows most classes to counterplay stealth, which to this point just lacks reasonable counters. Good thieves won’t really have any problems with this, but this definitely adds counterplay to druid and engie stealth resses.
Finally, I feel like there should be some on-crit sigils that give you stacking effects and don’t REALLY add RNG as much as they just promote building for precision. For instance, applying vuln, gaining might, building up to +X% damage, even applying 1 stack of bleed increase build decisions and synergy opportunities without being bursty and going “well I got procc’d to death”
The better question is…Why are you EVER even using shatterstone?
Question: Is there still the notional idea that sigils should apply offensive effects, while runes should be defensive? This has nice “purity of purpose” but also limits potentially useful and balanced sigils.
Sigil of Sight
Hitting a stealthed enemy applies 1s of revealed (10s CD).
Goal: Gives counterplay to stealth, so you can actually punish stealth when you know where it is.
Sigil of stability busting
Interrupts clear an extra stack of stability X% of the time, where X is your crit chance.
Goal: Allowing interrupts to “crit.” Even though it is RNG-ish, it still allows for predictable gameplay (as there won’t be any stun until a follow-up interrupt anyway).
Sigil of endurance
Critical hits restore 2 endurance (number subject to change).
Goal: Allow quick-hitting pressure builds a means of gradually getting extra defense that isn’t as brainless as energy was. Dangerous on evade-spam thieves.
Sigil of continued pressure
Oh crit gain 1 charge. After having 5 charges, the next time weakness would be applied, you instead clear your charges.
Alternatively: Deal 10% additonal damage when under the effects of weakness (to partially make up for damage reduction of weakness).
Goal: A means of conditionally combating certain conditions.
Sigil of anti-burning
When you hit a foe, reduce the duration of burns applied to you by 0.5s.
Goal: aggressive way to counter certain condis, can make similar versions for other condis. Numbers must be tuned so you aren’t immune but isn’t useless.
Sigil of alacrity
The next attack after swapping weapons has a 50% shorter CD.
Goal: Same as ranger trait that similar. Number to be tuned to prevent abuse.
Sigil of better blasting
Blast finishers in fire fields apply an extra stack of might (15s duration).
Goal: modify individual finishers to support a certain playstyle. This is just one example.
Very clickbait on that title.
Build doesn’t seem terrible, but don’t forget that auras also give you vigor, and so that means every shout except “Eye of the Storm” gives you vigor, meaning feel the burn is worth considering over cleansing flame (you lose a some cleanse, but gain an extra heal, more vigor, plus some for team-mates). Likewise, rebound will give you vigor more frequently than tornado, even if you just spammed it off-cd. Tornado is just so bad….
In the end, I don’t think you’ll be able to bang bodies in 1v1’s with warriors, druids, scrappers, or chronos (although chrono might be close if you play it well). This is definitely not a teamfight build (melee only, not much support, not that much damage), so wants to do be able to 1v1 effectively.
Also, you might be a little low on the protection side of things. Something like rune of the earth or leadership runes might actually be better on this.
(edited by BlackBeard.2873)
Scepter:
- Fire 1 casts faster (like 3/4 s) and automatically hits in a 160 radius
- Fire 2 is 1/2s cast time, same drop time
- Phoenix now has a 13s CD, normalize the number of hits it can do (this last part is coming anyway for raids)
- Water 1 actually hits targets
- Water 2 does damage on the first animation pulse, with a 2nd main hit shortly thereafter.
- Air 1 has no precast, does more 25% more damage (again)
- Earth 1 has no precast
- Earth 2 gives more toughness on use
- Earth 3 also removes 1 stack of stab (but doesn’t actually cc, or is 1/4s stun if that can’t be programmed)
OH Dagger
- Fire 5 has a 50% wider cone, probably needs more damage (unless they nerf HoT stuff) or needs to do burning damage all the time.
- RtL has a 20s CD, no “on hit” garbage.
- Earth 5 has a 1.5s cast, gives you 1 stack of stability.
Utilities:
- Arcane shield CD is now 30s
- Lighting flash is now 1200 range
- Cleansing fire is also a stunbreak again
Tempest
- This is now actually a SUPPORT spec. Overloads changed to focus primarily on support, with much shorter cast time. You don’t take tempest for an increase in dps. Also, overall healing capability it nerfed significantly (along with everything else HoT). Baseline for power-level is old d/d cele ele.
While I would love to see celestial, clerics, crusaders, and other amulets come back, ANet would still need to nerf the massive healing,power, CC, condi, and hard-mitigation power-creep they added with HoT.
I can’t imagine having to fight a condi d/d thief with settler’s amulet (toughness, healing power, condi), a support engie with cleric, a burst druid with crusader (huge burst, tons of healing, super-tanky, huge pet dps), even a d/f ele with cleric offers both support and great ability to hold a 2v1 for a very long time. Everything got too much with the addition of HoT, and the game has just been worse because of it.
Welcome back to GuildWarriors2. Everyone will just stack warriors because they are good in any quantity on a team and don’t have a real “counter” while being easy as sin to play.
Not much else will change in the meta. You might see more burst druids, and more engies (now better vs. condi) and slightly fewer thieves (less OP, but still a great carry class). You still won’t see many revs, as the “new” bunker build is really not that great.
Celestial was a problem because it had more stats than other amulets (kind of like how 4-stat amulets have more than 3, but scaled a little higher), but the scaling was too high. Before scaling the stats to be too high, celestial had the same number of stats as other amulets and NEVER got taken.
Logic would suggest there is a point somewhere in the middle where celestial is usable but not OP for everyone.
Of course, celestial is semi-tanky, which might be too good on HoT specs that have tons of hard mitigation, but they would hit like a wet noodle. Honeslty, only something like ele, which relies on soft mitigation + healing should be able maximize celestial.
endure pain
4 seconds
takes damage from conditions, can die to conditionsberserker stance
pulses resistance every 3 seconds for 8 seconds,
that means
0s = 3 seconds
3s = 3 seconds
6s = 3 secondsthat’s 9 seconds of resistance, which can be corrupted into chill for 3 times over a 6 seconds duration.
as for the stability pulse in berserk mode, that is 1 stack every 3 seconds, berserk mode last for 10 seconds.
able to dish out more than 1 cc skill within the 3 second window will still cc the warrior.
You conveniently forgot to add the traited ep for 2xep, and added duration from trait. Boon corrupts aren’t a thing yet in most classes. If you use 2 cc’s in 3s you’re blowing cooldowns for what most likely wont be a kill because the passive will kick in.
who takes that other trait anyway ?
if they dun take cleansing ire they will die horribly to conditions.Or kill the condi class by the time berserker stance wears off…..
it is the condi class problem if they die within 8 or 10 seconds
So…let’s say you have necro…how are they supposed to reasonably stay alive when they can’t hard-cc to kill that time (due to pulsing stab), can’t soft-cc thanks to plenty of resistance (plus leaps and cleanses when necessary), can’t kite (again, all the leaps and control a warrior brings), can’t effectively mitigate the damage (b/c no invulns/blocks that stop 100% of damage, and AGAIN resistance = ignore weakness), and NOBODY can sustain a zerker warrior’s damage (you need lots of blocks/invulns + blinks to have a shot).
Thing is…there isn’t a clear strategy for dealing with a warrior when he goes into godmode. At one point, you could focus on blinding them, or kiting them, or bursting them, but all those weaknesses have been removed thanks to addition of mechanics that just ignore everything you can do to combat the warrior. Other HoT things are OP, but warrior is honestly the worst for its ability to ignore your mechanics and be passively forgiven for mistakes and over-extension. It has a MINIMUM time to kill of at least 30s just thanks to all the healing + cleanse + passive invulns + blocks + mobility, even when +1’d.
ANet needs to reduce EVERYONE’s hard mitigation, warrior being the worst of all of them at this point. Also, resistance needs a split between damaging conditions and non-damaging conditions. Soft-CC and damage mitigation condis (cripple, chill, weakness, immob, plus other non-damage condis like fear and vuln) serve a completely different role from damaging condis. Making them both ignored by one simple mechanic is just short-sighted and poorly designed.
In theory, conjures are how you deal with being range-locked. However, the charge system kills it, so…get used to just swapping.
They removed even the idea of this concept when they “changed” skills like frenzy to have no drawbacks. Remember when you got quickness but also took 2x damage. That was high-risk, high reward – you could REKT people but also get your own face smashed in.
Instead, everyone has been given so many passives and get-out-jail-free mechanics that there isn’t a way to punish players by opportunistically using a double-edged sword. The closest you have to high-risk, high-reward is something like thief, which is so loaded with evades, shadowsteps, and stealth to get out of any bad situation that the risk is completely mitigated. If you gambit fails and the fight turns, you just go somewhere else. You don’t have to use CD’s to get around the map quickly and create opporunities…all that stuff is recharged in seconds…and other classes don’t even have THAT much risk/reward.
Anet doesn’t design for roles and holes…they just give everyone everything, with each class getting a little bit more of certain things to “specialize.”
No mention of shatterstone buffs?!?! FAKE NEWS!!! SAD!!!
This is very annoying, only game I know where you’re stuck waiting for everyone to click accept before you can do anything. Not exactly sure why it can not be minimized..
That is what the “dismiss” button does. After you accept, if you hit dismiss, it hides the “ready” screen until it is time for map selection, then you can’t hide a thing.
You would really think something would’ve surfaced at this point, but it’s only proven that ele is so closely locked to vitality and healing power it needs those to even be usable.
I’m no balance expert, this game has been out for what, 4 and a half years? We’ve only seen two, TWO meta builds for ele, cele (again, healing power, vitality and toughness are the major keys there) and tempest, which is the same thing minus the damage.
fresh air is a gimmick, we had that weird auto attack stay on earth attunement condi build for awhile before that got nerfed, but those were not very viable.
Actually, ele has more been locked to healing power and toughness, with menders only working b/c they jacked the strength of heals up so high and there aren’t any better options. Even that, with mender’s ele is forced to position extremely defensive and its role is no longer to bang bodies on point, but support those who are. You can 1v1 most builds if forced to, but in teamfights you have to skirt the main “fray” a bit so you don’t get bursted down.
Back near the start of the game (pre-cele days), ele played valkyries (which was power, toughness, healing power, and ferocity) and did quite well. Cele worked b/c it had enough toughness and healing power. Cleric was the next pick, b/c it had toughness and healing power. Menders is the last option ele was forced to b/c they removed all the toughness/healing power options.
Ele can handle low vitality better than low toughness, as there is an abundance of cleanses that can be specced. Also, healing power scales VERY well with toughness vs. power damage, while vitality actually decreases the percentage that healing power heals you. You really only need ENOUGH vitality that you have time to react and heal back up.
Potentially related, but not a big problem: Was queued around 2am EST last night, but cancelled my queue after about 4 mins because I wanted to do other things. Then, like 5 mins later I saw a “queue accept” dialog pop up for about 1s then automatically disappear. I thought this was weird but noticed I got no dishonor so no problem. However, just now I realize this COULD possibly be related. Maybe when people leave queue it removes the wrong person or you aren’t being careful with pointers?
That is the very reason why you need to vote “YES”, when the imbalance in the game becomes so apparent..it won’t be possible to hide anymore behind the curtain of silence..you vote “NO” and current OP specs will fly under the radar for another season
But classes that are good in every comp aren’t necessarily OP, they are just bruisers that are good in 1v1s and decent in teamfights. Like support or marauder engie, zerker/condi warrior, condi mesmer, healing druid, and dragon-hunter: its never really a problem to have too many of these bulids on your team, and not all of these are OP.
It is good that there are different roles in pvp (bruisers, roaming dps, support, teamfight dps), but some of those roles you only need 1 of.
The OP specs get played a lot whether people can swap or not. Not being able to swap, however, just makes matches a crapshoot as to what comp MM gives you, with no ability to fix a bad comp by swapping.
False. A S/F’s role is to primarily take 1v1s. It sucks at 1v1s because it’s so weak, and that doesn’t make it a +1 build.
The role of a dps build is to +1 and create winning fights. S/F ele still has bad sustained damage, and only burst, and its burst isn’t enough alone to kill anyone in any reasonable time without help. However, s/f does have enough burst to end fights by killing targets low on CD’s or unprepared for a huge damage drop. If s/f ele is supposed to 1v1, it needs more consistent damage, less burst (shave phoenix to only hit once or something, but lower CD), and way more sustain.
Even if a thief could win 1v1’s against most classes, its job is still to roam and end fights quickly. It just takes way too long to win any 1v1’s (as both classes) and you have to give up the decap and even full-cap against almost anything before anything dies. Only against heavily ranged classes can you really hold the point effectively. You rely on positioning, kiting, and very select usage of your long CD’s to stay alive, and you just can’t do that fighting over a point.
As bad as it sounds, I would be ok with ele bring the only class with access to celestial stats. If the metas have proven anything, it’s that ele only functions efficiently as a jack of all trades or a strict healer/support.
I know D/D ele was OP at one point, but there were plenty of times D/D was fine, it was strong but not impossible. The class is very one dimensional.
In fact, right after the release of HoT, cele ele couldn’t even keep up with new, shiny, HoT bruisers like marauder or soldier engie (before they removed it and instead gave paladin amulet), who have more damage AND sustain. Other bruisers like modern warrior would laugh out loud at cele ele, who couldn’t even out-damage their passive sustain and would die in 2-3 hits of a GS.
(edited by BlackBeard.2873)
Why not make a 3rd option: You pick a radio button called “multiclasser” that has its own MMR for your account (like a 10th class’s MMR) that allows you to change your class pre-match and uses your “multiclass MMR.” If you don’t select that radio button, it uses your class-specific MMR and you can’t swap.
Players that are vastly different skill levels on classes will want to queue as only a single class to avoid being over their head on their worse classes. People who only play their main will single-profession queue. People who multi-class or play at high levels where evening out team comp is important will be able to swap.
If this is not possible, you MUST allow class swapping, or else the following serious problems will drag down pvp.
- First and foremost, classes that rely on proper comp (dps builds needing support like a necro or support classes who need enough dps to actually kill others) are extremely handicapped and will not be played very much. Everyone will gravitate towards the bruiser classes that work well in every team comp, or the classes that have a couple of viable or near-viable builds so they can play alternative roles (like remorseless ranger and support druid). Is anybody EVER going to queue as rev knowing that half the matches they could be stuck against condi mes and necro with no cleanse support, making the match 4v5?
- Without swapping, teams are heavily restricted from trying to turn a bad comp into a good one. If you have a team that has a ranger and ele, and both want to play dps, what is the mesmer, thief, and rev on the team supposed to do? For that matter, when double-thief happens, you can’t even have one swap.
- As others mentioned, there will be even MORE pressure to play meta. “You are the ele on the team, play d/f support, stop being stupid!!!”
- It removes part of the game for high-level players who adjust their own comp to match their team needs or prevent enemy hard-counters.
For these reasons, you can’t class lock with the state the game is in. If every class had a viable support, dps, and bruiser build, then it wouldn’t be a problem. As it is, however, most classes have 1 truly build, and 1-2 fringe builds that are often just variants on the same role.
For soloing, I actually find d/wh or d/f (when more survival is needed, or a lot of projectiles are flying) to be easier myself. The damage is much easier to land, and more reliable. Staff often requires you basically stand in your fire fields and eat some damage to drop your own dps. D/wh can very easily kite enemies while keeping up great aoe pressure thanks to air auto-cleave and the large range of air overload.
Problem with ele has ALWAYS been survivability – we are given so little on weapon skills and utilities are on such a long CD that we are forced to max out every bit of defense we can get elsewhere, then figure out what role our max-defense build can perform.
The ONLY time that ele was ever able to do anything else was back when RtL had a 15s CD, was 1550 range, lightning flash was a stunbreak, mistform didn’t break channeled skills, and cleansing fire was a stunbreak. Also, air had more instant damage, and damage/mitigation/healing was lower back then, when people played 0/20/0/20/30 builds that mixed some air with water and arcana to have decent damage from air+phoenix+ring of fire + firegrab+Earthquake, etc with good survivability thanks to healing that could be easily covered by that 15s CD 1550 range RtL. They nerfed all the non-trait survivability, so every build we have now consists of 9/9 traits for max defense, 4/4 utilities/elite for defense, weapons that maximize defense, runes that maximize defense, and sigils that maximize defense.
D/D ele was in the same boat, and got by in terms of damage by stacking might to combo with soft mitigation (traits) and healing.
Support ele (now that d/d can’t keep up with powercreep, and no cele amulet) is also in the same boat, but can’t do any damage so it just maximizes team-healing/support.
The first step they made towards reversing this was putting a more reasonable CD on arcane shield, but ele is still pretty far from having a build that doens’t just maximize defense.
This is obv. all for pvp.
S/F ele can beat a war when in an open field and there is plenty of terrain for us to kite onto. Although in a 1v1 on a node, war wins. War wins easily. And the S/F only kills a war when the war overextends.
Yea, I think this is what people are trying to get at when they say “fight on a point.” In the context of pvp, if you want to 1v1, a warrior always gets an easy decap and quick cap as you can’t contest or kill in any timeframe that makes it a net positive to even stay and 1v1. The amount of pressure and ability to completely ignore anything you do (invulns, pulsing stab to ignore hard cc, cleanse of soft cc, resistance to ignore blinds) just require ceding the point.
As an s/f ele, you really shouldn’t be 1v1 just about anyone (except other squishies that are based on projectiles, like power ranger, rifle engie, and maybe DH if they aren’t good or are low on CD’s). Those matchups you CAN get a kill outside of this require giving up a cap for so long that its a loss in pvp context, besides the point that a thief will just come +1 you and instagib you while low on CD’s for taking so long to “win” the 1v1 and kill anyway.
That said, 1v1ing isn’t even the role that a roaming dps fulfills. I am not even sure what possible niche burst ele could be given that would make it a viable pick for teams.
- Rev has a spot when played well due to high mobility and still good burst to take out targets in teamfights and +1’s. This is the roaming dps that teamfights and stalls some 1v1s well.
- Thieves obviously own +1’s with their INSANE mobility. This is the standard for all roaming dps.
- Mesmers (even condi) still have portal, good sustain to act like a bruiser, and a huge condi burst/moa to be excellent in +1’s.
S/F ele doesn’t have a viable niche to even compete against what these alternatives can offer. A burst build that can give some heals makes no sense, and giving boons is already done better by rev (which isn’t even OP atm). Maybe s/f needs to be catered toward a bruiser build, but that role is already so bloated with engies, druids, warriors, and DH’s. Perhaps if you give s/f enough mobility and damage, it can be a middle-ground between revs and thieves, with higher mobility than rev, but lower than thief. Better single-target damage and decent burst compared to rev, and better survivability (thanks to range) in teamfights than thief (but still lower mobility).
It REALLY depends on the class and your role in the team more than anything. Many classes should basically never 1v1, such as:
-Thief: don’t 1v1 unless you catch someone low on health/CDs and can end it quickly.
- Ele: don’t 1v1 basically ever…you should always be in a teamfight. If you are 1v1-ing on a support build, you are hurting your team.
- Necro: You should be in teamfights. You can take 1v1’s against engies or revs, but you shouldn’t unless your team is watching your back as you have no way to get out of a 2v1.
- Rev: similar to thief, although you can stall a point for a very long time against non-condi builds for support to come, and some 1v1’s are ok to take (esp if not condi).
More importantly, is choosing when to 1v1:
- On your opponent’s point and not going to end it soon or decap quickly: Just leave, you are wasting time, and losing as they own the point.
- On a neutral point, but going to get a +1 to win: take it
- On a neutral point but going to get +1: kite, stall, and leave once they have the cap.
- On your own point: go ahead and take it, leave if you are going to die, unless you know you can’t get away. Then die on point rather than off-point.
I think reducing cd on phoenix is justified because its a harder to land burst than a thief spamming 5 on staff
I also think reducing FGS to 60s is fair because the build lacks in the out of combat mobility department which is necessary for roamer builds
Both of these things could have been done in even pre-HoT meta, and I support them.
I also support buffs to OH dagger, like un-nerfing RtL CD (15-20s CD, this has been needed for over a year, and can be safely done as OH dagger is 100% unusable and irrelevant), reducing CD’s on other OH skills, and still it probably won’t be used b/c hard mitigation is so important in the post-HoT power-creep.
However, S/F ele will never be anything but a bad thief. As a burst build, your job is to +1 and end fights quickly. S/F just can’t compete with thief, even with 60s FGS, to make an impact anywhere near the same due to mobility issues. Now, it is possible that adding some more damage makes it more effective as a 1v1, with decent support (cleanses/heals/swirling winds), and good teamfight capability, but then you are competing with mesmer/ranger/warrior/dh/etc for that “bruiser, good at 1v1, can teamfight pretty well” as opposed to “roaming dps.” Even as a bruiser, its hard to compare to a druid’s 12s RtL that evades.
If you want ANY class to compete with thief for roaming dps role again, you either need to:
1.) Make it OP from a damage/survivability + high mobility like rev was pre-nerfs (now the damage is average, and you don’t choose rev over thief)
OR
2.) Nerf thief mobility so other classes aren’t so far outstripped. With 450 range dodges (and up to 7 in a row) + shortbow + shadowstep, with a stealth kicker (for sneakiness), nobody can compete with thief in terms of mobility except for mesmer thanks to portal (and that is on a completely different implementation).
Let’s discuss the new changes to Khylo, as well as how the impact overall play.
Camera:
Removal of the roof is great for camera visibility, this is good.
New treb entrance:
This is good for low-levels and to give a new exit, perhaps reducing the distance from spawn to far and mid, esp. at the start of the match. At higher levels, this entrance will not change too much.
New pathing:
Thieves were hurt BIG this patch, with less overall mobility compared to other classes, as well as more non-blink spots (many of which don’t make sense). This also removed the roof as a means of juking/overall mobility.
BUG? It seems that red side you cannot port from the ground onto the walkway, but blue side you can. This must be a bug.
Other thoughts?
Warrior: Reduce the range on arcing slice. Getting randomly hit for 50% of your damage form someone not even on the screen (and no reasonable animation on the skill) is just dumb. Also, make the cast time 3/4s. Headbutt cast time should also be 3/4s. Big effects should have big cast times.
DH: Put a cast time on shield knocback (1/2 s) and a proper cast time/travel time for spear throw (3/4 s) and they are perfect. Instant/unavoidable CC’s are stupid.
Rev: Pretty good, just adjust some of the other stuff and these guys will be fine. Swapping legends shouldn’t proc on-swap sigils (this was an issue in the past, will be again some time on the future).
Engie: Fine in comparing its role as support vs. other options, but probably needs its sustain brought down a little if reducing some of the “free” damage on other classes. Good choices are: less stability from “evading an attack” (too much reward for something so easy). Also, bunker down is bad design….it so insanely passive/mindless.
Ranger: Put a proper cast time on staff 3 (~18-20s). I would also like to add a short windup to point-blank shot. Again, CC should have some kind of windup. Ancient seeds needs a nerf…probably reduce the duration a little bit, as it promotes pretty mindless gameplay (Just CC the guy, then he is a sitting duck for free!).
Thief: Reign in the power of pulmonary impact, which is just suffocating for many classes. Also, reduce the mobility a tad by reducing unhindered combatant – it doesn’t need 10s of swiftness AND 450 range AND remove all cc condis with no ICD. Maybe that last effect should have a 10s CD, or the swiftness should be removed/reduced to 3s. Also, panic strike immob is stupid and undodgeable…change that.
Necro: Remove chill of death, replace with something that has counterplay. Please, add a reasonable animation to scepter and axe attacks, so you aren’t just randomly being hit with no indication from what angle it is coming from (bad design that is a personal pet peeve). Necro damage should come more from landing skills/combos and less from procs.
Mesmer: While the damage is stupid, the amount of sustain/kiting that it can pull off is the worst. Increase the CD of signet of illusions, put an ICD on chronophantasm, increase the GCD of all shatters (again, so people don’t just spam them all when they are in cont. split once again), and probably modify how cont. split works with moa/elite skills.
Ele: reduce some the tempest sustain, starting first with the free frost aura from ele. bastion. Perhaps reduce the total healing a little bit more (esp. if you take damage away from every other class). Perhaps get rid of the “improved protection,” and instead rework tempest/the class to be able to do something other than be an enabler of other builds in pvp.
Problem with DH is too many instant/near instant CC’s (shield knockback + spear pull) that combos really well with test of faith. Put a proper cast time on these skills so they can actually be avoided and DH becomes capable of being better outplayed and less rewarding for mindless spam.
Warrior’s problem is too many immunities, esp. having the pulsing stab on a short CD combined with arc divider doing way too much damage for its 450 range and only 1/2s cast time. Reduce the range quite a bit, as it currently hits ignoring height quite a bit and way beyond where there is any animation. You can be fighting, then BAM, get hit for half your health by a warrior you can’t even see who arc divider’d off screen.
As others have said:
1. You aren’t really a tank anymore, although you can hold the point extremely long vs. almost any build (long enough for help to come and not get decapped). In fact, even a few 2v1’s are good for you (any combination of ele, druid, scrapper, DH if they aren’t great at dealing damage) to hold a decap for quite a while, being careful to save enough CD’s to still get away when they eventually cap and 1 leaves (if they stay to stupidly 2v1 and you can survive, go ahead and let them lose the game for their team).
In soloQ, currently, I almost always take Stone Heart over diamond skin, as I feel even condi build quite easily get you below that 75% mark, and proper usage of cleanses (I.e. not cleansing single bleed stacks, but big stacks instead) is still good enough. Stone heart makes you a MILLION times tankier, esp. vs. thieves and warriors. Without stone heart, a thief can kill you pretty quickly, even in 1v1. With stone heart, you can survive almost indefinitely (certainly way too long for him to get value of 1v1ing you). This also cuts power warrior damage by a LOT.
A special note on thieves: the proper way to fight them is to not use any skills (not even autoattacks or overloads, besides overload earth), and instead focus on keeping prot up, kiting or covering your heal (heal after using obsidian flesh or earth 4 to prevent headshot interrupting). If you have stone heart, camp earth for most of the fight except when you will need heals from water. You can cover the time inbetween with shocking aura and some kiting.
Also, another note that many players ignore. Lightning touch (air 2) is AMAZING for cutting dps of burst builds (power warrs, DH, and thieves esp, who rely on crits). Weakness is one of the most powerful defensive conditions in the game.
2. Practice kiting. Lighting flash can get you out of most situations, and smart use of terrain can take a LOT of pressure off you. You don’t need to stand on the point, its ok if they get a few ticks or even cap it. Look up some vids on good kiting locations for each point. You don’t even need to right on top of your team-mates to heal them, auras you apply to yourself heal with 360 range (about the size of the point), so use LOS off point and let your heals cover the distance.
3. Don’t worry about might, it doesn’t really matter. You are better off using fire wall, then leap finishing it with earth 3 to get a fire aura (more heals and cleanse) than trying to do damage. Paying attention to your team-mates fields matters too. See a druid use the vine wall, or engie drop his turret? Go water or earth and blast them if he is being pressured. Same with smoke fields that thieves sometimes drop at the start of the match.
4. Besides support, you also provide some very useful CC/condis. Weakness from air 2, interrupt from shocking aura (esp if you are keeping necro up, shocking aura then follow him around to give a peel), chill from water 3 and 4, long-range interrupts with water 5 (amazing for interrupting resses b/c its aoe interrupt) and unblockable interrupt from air 5. Don’t waste air 5, esp if they have a warrior or mesmer – interrupt their shield block and they melt. Finally, when in a fight where each team has an ele on point: pay attention to their ele. Save shocking aura for when he overloads air, then when he leaves air you can overload yourself to give lots of dps (if you get to overload air and he doesn’t and they stand in it, that is a HUGE dps swing, and shocking aura is the easiest way to interrupt overload air). Be ready to interrupt water overload when he camps water for a while (water 5 is amazing for this as it is ranged and also ignores LOS). These two things will seriously pressure him (as you deprive him of air for 20s with no benefit, and most eles use water overload as a last-ditch, but good ones will LOS first). Of course, balance this with healing your team-mates, but if you interrupt his healing like this and get off your own, you are way ahead.
I almost NEVER bother with overload fire (except for downed cleave). The range is too low, and the quicker access to the aura on 5 and evade on 3 is more valuable than an overload that is more likely than not going to get randomly interrupted.
(edited by BlackBeard.2873)
I think ANet really needs to take a pass through skills and ask themselves “How much weaker could I make this skill and have it still be used nearly 100% of the time?”
A good example of this, as mentioned earlier, is lightning flash. Yes, it doesn’t stunbreak anymore, but its still taken 90% of the time by eles (never leaves my bar in any game mode) as its still our best utility imo.
If shadowstep was 900 range and had no stunbreak, or only had 1 stunbreak (on the return for instance), would every thief take it? Probably. Sure, you then need to think about inter-class balance, but I think this game needs to start trying to reign in the power-level of everything – we could then make better diversity and have more interesting build options. Instead, we get 1 meta build for most classes and maybe 4-6 utilities to actually choose from (the rest being pure trash). Same problem with traits.
This is a problem related not as much to balance as it is power-creep. As they are designing new skills, they have to make them as powerful or more powerful than the current best-in-slot to see any usage, which is how you end up with giving a stunbreak+block+cc on a 15s CD (and yet that still isn’t used all the time b/c its just so hard to compete).
Most brainless specs (although not most OP). All of these are
1. D/D condi thief
2. Power warrior
3. Symbolic Guard
4. Vault-spam thief (although there is a decent skill cap to use optimally)
5. MM Necro
Man, ANet really struggles to make thief builds that rely on intelligent use of synergies like d/p does (and lesser extent s/d, although that’s not very good now). Every other build is just spamming the same skill.
It is good to see that carry classes can get you to your correct MMR effectively.
Now for those who play eles and engies…I wonder how well such an experiment would work. I guess the true suggestion is to get gud on warrior/thief/mesmer to truly climb (although thief suffers the problem of only needing 1 and being over-saturated in number of players).
I think the other shadowsteps should have their range nerfed.
LF should, however, have its stunbreak added back in. The days of d/d ele being an unstoppable tank are LONG gone (d/d isn’t even viable), and cantrips aren’t even taken outside LF anymore. Ele has below-average mobility too, even with LF. Adding the stunbreak would also help dps ele more than anything, as support ele generally is fine with a properly placed blink to get out of dodge already.
I just applied the Crimson Lion skin a couple of days ago, and it seems my warhorn gives both a roar + a fart, so you get it coming out both ways!
Honestly, I hate the fart sound so much!! Its way worse than the standard warhorn sound, and it took me a few hours playing HoT to wonder what the fart sound was all the time before I realized it was my ele!
Solutions:
Two of the these changes (at least are needed):
1, Blurred frenzy needs a much higher cd to stop the evasion spam.
2, Moa #3 should give 3 stacks of stability
3, Portal should have reduced range
4, Continuum split should have a higher cd in pvp1. No it has been fine for years
2. 5 and 2 plus dodges are more than enough to survive for 6 seconds
3. See 1
4. 90s is already really high for a class mechanic that doesn’t do anything in itself, if you see CS go up just dodge. Mesmers already have to stun you to land Moa because of how easy it is to dodge the obvious CS -> Moa.
The problem with your notes on #1 and #3 is that these were never a problem when mesmer was basically required to splay only squishy builds that relied solely on active defenses (PU mesmer was never viable b/c you would lose the point). Nowadays, mesmers don’t really have a “squishy” body, thanks to all the sustain in Inspiration, blocks, and abundant shatters fueled by chronophantasm. A skill that is balanced on a squishy body can all of a sudden become OP when put on a tankier/better support.
Still, I think the problem lies in the chrono specialization, as I wouldn’t want to nerf core classes. One potential change could be to make portal an elite: it wouldn’t really hurt core shatter mes, who could now take more survival or burst utils, but would really make a tough call between moas and the high map control mesmer has. Alternatively, you nerf shield, specialization traits (esp. chronophantasm), or sig. of inspiration (which allows shatters to be all the more spammable).
Who would have known, that instant and extremely low cast-time CC combined with a skill that does massive damage when being pushed back and forth over it could lead to a class being very rewarding while quite easy to play?
Even more, put that on a body that is decently sturdy (between blocks/invulns + heals), with above-average map mobility (between blinks + lynx runes + leap), and has excellent ranged pressure when things get hair, and you get a spec that is stacked extremely well.
Honestly, the CC is the problem, as there is too much cc that lacks a suitable tell (shield knockback is instant, spear pull travels way too fast and even the pros can rarely dodge it (they have to predict when its coming, you can’t react to it), and bow 3 knockback is quite quick too. Just up the cast time on some of these skills, and the damage becomes much easier to play around but still possible for good players.
Honestly, MOST of the problems with GW2 have always been:
- Instant skills (and skills with too low of a cast time for extremely high reward)
- Auto-procs
- excessive numbers of invulns, blocks, evades, etc.
Basically every class, across the board, needs some of these things reduced.
To make it useful in pvp: reduce the cast time to 1/4s and the CD to like 30 (but reduce the duration), then I might consider taking glyph of storms for the near-invulnerability on-point from earth storm.