What: Sylvari Thieves
Why:
- They glow. Glowing things should not get to have stealth.
- Caithe is a thief. Letting other players copy her cramps her style and makes her less unique.
- Take Root. No one wants to wait through 3 seconds of invulnerability for their loot bag.
Or, alternatively, a tooltip update:
Gain revealed when your health reaches a certain threshold.
It’s our #1 underwater elite!
If an empty slot was an option, it would be #2, but the game won’t let me remove it.
Dear Assassin’s Reward,
It’s not you; it’s me. I’m just not that into you.
We had a lot of fun together, but this just isn’t a grandmaster relationship. You expect too much from me and aren’t willing to give back in return. I need a trait that isn’t so needy and understands my needs.
I’ve met that trait. Her name is Pain Response. She knows what this is. It’s not a commitment. It’s just a little healing on the side while I’m going out for Feline Grace.
I wish you the best and hope you find the build that’s right for you.
Sincerely,
Clockwork Bard
P.S.
I was never into Hard to Catch. I have no idea where you got that idea. She’s really random and just causes more problems when ever she tries to help.
^ He acknowledged that it required also using Infiltrator’s, i.e. a utility to accomplish the tele-stomp, but still didn’t like it.
(clutches his Mesmer’s Blink and sobs) Oh god, you’re next. We’ve… (sniffle) We’ve been through so much together.
Maybe there’s still time. I must warn my kin! I must tell them to stop asking for daggers and mainhand pistol. I must warn them to stop using stealth. If we stop looking like thieves, we might just be able to throw them off the trail before it’s too late.
And the stun-escape (it didn’t break stuns) was only half of the argument for the change. The other half was the supposed ability to tele-stomp in pvp.
Now, I need to know…
I need to know, is there some kind of magical way to change where your shadow return circle is? Was it possible to be stomping someone, have them escape through whatever downed ability they have, and press #2 in some fashion to teleport you somewhere other than your return circle. Because if someone escaped to your return circle, they clearly deserved the bunny flag to the face.
I ask this, because I’d really, really hope that the lead designer of this game didn’t feed us a giant straw man to push through a change that ultimately tanks the skill ceiling and creative use of an ability. Then, in the same thread, argue that ranger swords needed to stay the same because the awkward mechanics promoted skillful play.
If I am wrong, and this did happen, just lie to me. Just lie to me so I feel better.
Oh I’ve not even begun to open the Skelk Venom can yet. I could rant for pages about venoms, utilities that demand hyper-specialization and more. Pages that would be filled with many, many words, some of which would likely be very colorful.
I’ll leave all that put aside, because they made this one easy. On the profession with the least non-avoidance mitigation and tied for tiniest health pool, I am not waiting 45 seconds for my heal. Especially considering it offers no other utility what so ever.
Bunker thieves new meta? Lol!!!!! 30pts into acrobatics for this lackluster healing trait.
Yup yup.
I mean, it sounds like a fair change to me. Thieves should totally have to engage in combat if they want their healing.
Guardian: “rofl, yeah, don’t be a dodge-noob!” perma-vigor; dodge-heal, dodge-heal…
Is it at all significant? I’m assuming “by 35%” they mean 35% of its already negligible scaling. Which comes out as a nerf for me, because I’m having to give up 100 healing power from my Shadow Arts line to chase the thing into the grandmaster tier.
check mate.
this alone poitns out the uselessness of the trait. would have to do x x 30 30 x just to make it work. and you always want p/p ricochet build for assassins reward or dagger dagger Death Blossom spam…. buuuuuuuuut ohwell.
Aye, and it gets worse. You give up a lot of potential offense by going 30 in Acrobatics. Then you have to gear Healing Power, which only comes on gear combinations one offensive stat boost. You’re giving up more there.
So, any build that is not raw-conditions gives up a LOT of offensive potential. Raw condition and bunker thieves do not stand toe-to-toe in an engaged fight, as was the stated goal of the change. They win by attrition and lots of avoidance. And since this is a trickle heal, they’re going to have to avoid damage entirely until it manages to top them back off.
Tentative Conclusion: The change has the opposite effect of that which was intended.
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Is it at all significant? I’m assuming “by 35%” they mean 35% of its already negligible scaling. Which comes out as a nerf for me, because I’m having to give up 100 healing power from my Shadow Arts line to chase the thing into the grandmaster tier.
Blink and Temporal Curtain are pretty much it for a while. Signet of Inspiration will randomly pop swiftness, even out of combat, but of course never when you want it.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/2013-02-26
Eased the restrictions on global leash time.
Wait… Am I to understand that this is actually intended behavior? The game purposely starts a “bugger off” timer when a mob leaves its tether zone?
I guess this post doesn’t belong in the bug forum then. But there’s no wtf? forum… so… I guess this should be moved to the Suggestions forum.
Suggestion: This is bad. Don’t do this!
This is by no means the first time this has been a problem, but this was just ridiculous. I wandered into Ascalon Settlement. It was taken over. (The centaurs spend enough time there to raise a family.) But anyways, being purely alone and low level, I gave up on my fight very fast. The champion however gave chase as I went for the vista. It followed me all the way up the ramp, where the only living guards in the place rushed to my aid. I decided to make a stand. We fought it for a several minutes. Then it hit around 50% HP and called it quits. Just up and walked away, getting its HP back.
Please make this behavior consistent. I was purposely leading it closer to town after deciding to fight it just to avoid this behavior, so know it had nothing to do with it hitting some magic distance. It just decided to dog me for a mile, then tether back after several minutes of fighting when it was losing.
PS: This is also extremely infuriating when a mob wanders up to me, then decides to bug out mid-fight. And often, they’ll still remember their aggro and come running back at me again, full HP and looking for a fight. Have had this happen as many as 3 times in a single fight.
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Heh, this almost seems to be turning into a forum game. Someone describes a bug they’ve experienced. Someone else who has experienced that bug chimes in then gives a new bug they’ve experienced. It could go on for a while. :P
This sounds like a kittene to reproduce. I do periodically have issues with the game’s action queuing system. Excessive after cast dead time will put a block on any skills coming after them for a seemingly random amount of time. Very rarely, that second skill will act as if it was interrupted. The engineer’s Flame Turret toolbelt skill, Throw Napalm, is one skill I can pick out that did it enough to be noticeable.
That would be awesome, but it’s my understanding that the Dreamcleaver is part of the Bone Pick and Jack-in-the-Box Scythe set.
Edit: If it were confirmed that there would be a full “Dream” set like this, then I would make them my first perma-gather purchases. The aesthetic is understated compared to the other tools and pleasant.
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The (arguagably?) most popular class in the game has one of the most amazing condi counter builds out there, but good luck convincing any or those warriors to use a warhorn :p
Heck yeah! Regen banners and warhorns converting conditions to boons. I’m basically a beefed-up mobile healing turret that doesn’t die. Bee-tee-dubs, how you all likin’ dat Vigor? That’s what I thought.
“Shake It Off!”
Mix in soldier runes, Shrug it Off and a second shout to taste.
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That is actually incorrect. The people waiting at the swamp get a bigger reward than you did because that is considered a group event for some reason even though all the events are just 3 portals plus a bunch of the same mobs.
Haha! Shows how often I actually do that event. I think the last time I was part of it was when three of us tried to take SB before a late-night reset. Good to know.
It’s ultimately a game of chicken. There’s a benefit to being the one that holds out for the best outcome. But, if all participants hold out for the best outcome then the worst outcome happens: nobody gets anything.
I dunno, I guess it depends on what the “next easiest thing” after champ farming is. For many people, it’s WvW zerg chasing. Simple and rewarding, and has an overall positive gameplay impact. I can’t deride that. What would the next easiest thing be fore the pure-pve crowd?
The mechanics for this kind of encouraged diversification is already started, though it seems they just kind of gave up on it. When you kill mobs, you get bonus xp based on how old that mob was. It’s not a little one, either. It can easily double the value of the kill. Not a bad payoff just for wandering off the path or killing a few yellows.
Then that was it. Back at launch, when karma trains were getting popular, they were talking about making it so events started diminishing the payoff after the second time you did them in a day. And I haven’t heard another thing about it since. It just ceased to be a priority somewhere along the way.
460g is more than enough to start playing the market. While the profits are going to be proportional to the time and amount invested, it’s easily enough starting capital to start learning the ropes.
I’m generally that one guy at Taminn Foothills, just because it needs doing. I personally don’t mind and enjoy myself well enough.
However, there is absolutely zero incentive to do it. It’s always the last to complete. The moment I do so, a pre-event pops in the swamp. The zerg waiting for SB completes it in a matter of seconds before I can return. They get the exact same reward I just got, because they got their own event of equal value. They also didn’t have to pay for a waypoint port just to make it back in time for the actual world event.
At the end of the day, when all accounts are balanced, I’m paying (albeit an insignificant amount) so they can do the event.
If ascended gear were reversed…
People would have a hard time explaining why they were holding their swords by the pointy end.
Then imagine how awkward it would get when pants were released…
~Kris Kross will make ya grind grind!~
That would be wiggida wiggida wiggida wack.
For WvW it has become “Immobilize Wars 2”…
More like “Stack Wars 2”
I can’t fathom why they would cap AoE at 5 (random!!) targets yet leave buffs uncapped and applicable beyond the party members.I’m pretty sure that buffs are capped at five, and prioritize party members…
Quite certain of that as well, otherwise guardians would have been basically invincible in a zerg.
Haha. Guardian gets out staff; presses #4. ~You Win! Perfect!~
So, reading those quotes, they really do intend to create a gradual but constant power growth. For example, they fully expect to one day raise the level cap. In doing so, all that shiny ascended gear will cease to be the pinnacle of gear and you’ll need to suit back up again. Only your legendaries are safe.
For context, the entire Q/A:
The Question“Here’s what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game. Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.”
That was the quote that sold a lot of people on Guild Wars 2. For years we waited for a game that would give us horizontal progression, not vertical progression. We were told that you were building the game around that.
Then, only a few short months after release, a new higher-stat gear grind was added. Why? Why cater to a sub-section of your playerbase who are cannot stop being, for lack of a better term, WoW-minded when it comes to progression? Why go back on your word to a loyal playerbase that supported you guys for so long?
Also, you stated there was a gap between Legendary and Exotic progression. There was no stat gap, so I can only assume you meant a time gap. But there was a filler — unique Exotics that were harder to get than the normal, base ones. Please clarify what you meant by that gap.
Thank you.
Chris W AnswerThanks for taking the time to post your questions. Mike O will respond to the top question and I will respond to the bottom section.
Ascended Gear is designed to fill the ‘Time’ gap in regard to the distance between exotic and Legendary in terms of progression and in retrospect would have been better to have been rolled out pre launch.
I would also like add that we have never said there would be no vertical progression. We do intent to focus on horizontal but we will have vertical progression moving forward with the focus on zero grind and a very low power curve.
Please understand that we see the community as a ‘whole’ and therefore are not intending to design again for one specific type of player over another. This is a misconception and one that is not promoted by the team. We will continue to develop the game for the community as a whole offering game play that caters to lots of different types of players in a unified approach that will evolve over time based on feedback and the direction the team as a whole wants to take.
Mike O AnswerHi! I’ll respond to the top part since it’s a quote from me.
Obviously the key phrase I’m going to point you to in that quote is, “if someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it”. That really is the litmus test we’ve used. That’s why, at ship, we gave better stats to exotic gear and didn’t give better stats to legendary gear.
More generally, I hope we’ve been clear that GW2 is not a game with virtually no stat progression in it like GW1 was. That’s why GW2 shipped with a higher level cap, and with a hard separation between PvE and PvP. In GW1 we never advanced the level cap through four campaigns/expansions. The game design didn’t allow for it. But GW2 was designed without those restrictions, and we’ve always expected that we will someday raise the level cap in GW2.
That’s why we’ve always said that GW2 rewards players through both progression and collection, whereas GW1 primarily rewarded through collection. Presumably players aren’t shocked that GW2 rewards through progression, since it has a level 80 cap.
I wonder if the core sentiment is more this: It’s only been two-and-a-half months! We don’t even all have exotics yet, and already you’re introducing another tier. Is this the start of a power progression curve that I’ll never be able to keep up with?
I certainly appreciate that worry. I myself don’t want a constant struggle, as exists in some other games, to keep my equipment viable.
Then we’re left with a balancing act. Some progression is ok, but pushing players onto gear treadmill isn’t ok and isn’t what the game is about.
So I would ask you to judge us by details, and not by making slippery-slope arguments. We introduced a ton of new content in November, and the sum total of new progression rewards we added to go with it provided a 5-10% stat increase in 2 of 12 slots. I hope you’ll agree that that kind of very shallow and gradual progression does not force people onto a gear treadmill.
I think it’s important for GW2 to be able to have this kind of gradual progression. Of course we made some mistakes with the way we introduced ascended gear. (See ChrisW’s answers for details.) But those are addressable issues. I don’t think they invalidate the fundamental concept that GW2 can have gradual stat progression without being a gear treadmill game.
It would be a start to fix the mess they made 1 year ago.
The best way Ascended should be treated
-same stat of exotics (just with infusion slots for fractal)
-can swap stats (you grinded for it, you deserve to retain a “reward” cause stats are taken away, and this would be far better than +stat)
I would find this satisfactory. Fractals are a time and skill investment. The investment that goes into acquiring ascended equipment is several times that of an ordinary exotic. Being able to morph their stats would offer back the equivalent of multiple pieces of equipment. Even if I didn’t run fractals, I’d feel inclined to invest the time to suit my main in that kind of equipment, purely for the convenience factor. About the only downside I can think of would be the need to commit to a single rune set. That’s not so good if you want to use a certain condition or support set for one of your builds. But if that one set is Travelers, hoo-yeah!
Confusion should work just like Torment, except that you take more damage if you use an ability during the second before it tics. This will allow them to up the duration of confusion to Torment levels making confusion actually decent in PvE.
That’s really interesting. I’m not 100% sold on it, since it doesn’t directly address the pve issues (I do admit that when it comes to pve, conditions have many issues), but I still really like it.
It works thematically too. It’s like a psychic infection. You can’t completely shake it, but if you comply then you can at least minimize the pain. It fits the domination aspect of the mesmer fairly well.
I am concerned that it would make confusion less imposing. Though I don’t know. Mesmers. You’re used to getting blasted with conditions and just having to deal with it. If you have a few stacks of torment on you and no cleanse available, how inclined are you to stop moving? If confusion worked like this, would it really make you more cautious in your choice of attacks?
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The question is then which is going to ultimately maintain a more stable economy in a world where things appear out of thin air.
They do not appear out of thing air. Someone put forth the time to obtain them. Even if the item has a random chance to drop, Someone had to take the average time to kill X number of whatevers to obtain it. By fighting monsters and completing jumping puzzles you are essentially crafting gear and mats with time spent fighting or falling to your death repeatedly. The value of the item is in relation to the cost of obtaining it. If arena net flooded the trading post with mats or equips using GM commands then your argument would be justified.
That the TP wasn’t instantly flooded with something doesn’t change that something that did not exist now does. That you tried real hard to get it does not change the fact that a pouch of copper did not exist until you smacked that bandit in the face with your sword. Seconds after his death, a new bandit reappears ready to distribute a new pouch of copper. There is an infinite supply of copper and bandits ready to fade into existence to meet the demand for sword smacking and looting.
Yes, similar examples can be made example of wood, plants and creatures. Ignoring that these are generally perishable goods with finite lives, the scale is much smaller. Literally every single human player in an MMO is generating wealth and resources through almost every action they take. Ultimately, in real life, effort alone does not conjure things into existence in this fashion.
That is what I meant. That in a game economy, things must cease to exist. Gold cannot simply appear and then be passed infinitely around between players. The goal is to create a stable economy in which resources and wealth pass out of existence at a comparable (though not necessarily identical) rate to them coming in.
And so the question then is, what method best accomplishes this?
I feel that confusion and torment should have different effects in PvE. Mob sluggish behavior set aside for the moment, these conditions just aren’t PvE conditions.
Mobs will never react to them. A monster isn’t going to stop attacking to wait out a confusion stack. They’re not going to stop moving moving because of torment. They’re what we’d call soft control, because they promote a desired behavior with the threat of punishment rather than demand it through hard stops.
But why should a monster care? They always take the minimal amount of movement and action necessary, and are buffed with large health pools and powerful attacks to compensate. They’re built as the perfect machines to defy these conditions with little to no consequences.
Torment, yeah, we can kind of LoS or kite them and abuse their bad AI. It’s not great, but it’s there. Confusion, as things are right now, will never be useful. They could triple the damage, it would likely still be suboptimal. It needs to do something completely different to AI creatures. Buffing it isn’t going to change the fundamental incompatibility. It needs to actually affect their behavior.
Literally confuse them? I don’t know. But as it is now, that little swirly is there right now purely for human brains. The AI needs to learn to show it the same respect.
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Oh man, I forgot about that guy. Good times.
Yeah, that was an April Fools reveal. A hilarious one.
The Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR2Esy83MQ0
And then people raged that ArenaNet was making goofy April Fools jokes instead of working on the game. Because it’s the Internet.
That’s a big chicken.
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Some general tips from my personal experience. These don’t all apply to using your booster, but the booster makes it that much better.
Don’t just go somewhere with a bunch of mobs and farm that spot. This will pay out horribly. Creatures generate extra XP if they’ve been in the world for a while. This means you need to keep going new places. As empty as the maps have been lately, you’ll bank really good xp just going for a map completion.
For the reasons stated above, kill non-hostile creatures. People ignore “yellows”. That means they’re usually old and worth boats of xp. Often much more than the mobs you’re after.
Enemies in lower level areas give less experience, but they die faster. Unless you’re dropping enemies your own level like stones then it ends up working out. I found on my weaker characters, I was actually getting a better return on lower level maps. Plus those mid-tier mats are always worth a few coin.
Lastly, the booster lasts 24 hours of online time. That means it doesn’t tick while you’re offline. You can really stretch it out if you swap out anytime you intend to squat in LA or do extensive shopping. But don’t feel like you’ve got to be constantly on the warpath either. 24 hours is a long time to stress about time optimization.
I also hear WvW is the way to go with them. Specifically, zerg chasing. I don’t know how the numbers work out. The amount of downtime you end up with is a bit out of your hands. But it is nice to benefit from those other bonuses the bday booster has to offer.
I’ve not tried running dungeons or fractals with one.
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I’d go for that. FRM is a hard sell sitting in the goldmine that is the Dueling line, though I still take it sometimes. I also like when they stack the cooldown traits with the “does this other little thing” traits.
I think for most players, both of those traits could replace the word “manipulations” with “Blink” and it wouldn’t change their build in the slightest. Sometimes I do feel dirty taking two traits for a single utility skill. But it’s Blink, so not that dirty.
Quickness is an all around useful ability. It increases the speed of quite a few things, not just attacks. Basically anything channeled, like reviving, harvesting, stomping, etc. It also usually comes with some sort of drawback like reduced endurance regeneration, reduced healing or taking extra damage. Time Warp has none of these drawbacks, affects multiple people and is an ethereal combo field for the cherry on top.
PUSH because it going on ma nerves
look this
http://s14.directupload.net/images/131121/9f6qnozo.jpg
3x same message from 3 different accounts in 10 minutes?
you can see i reported them + blocked themthey spam same message all day – why this cant be filtered?
arenanet even care about this reports?
and ban stupid goldbuyers too – they are reason why this guyz do this
And they waited until your bags were full to try and sell you things. Is there no end to their fiendishness?!
But yeah, that’s kind of ridiculous.
Yeah, as long as the gem store keeps churning out homerun shinies, the ratio is sure to climb. Everytime a new hotness comes out, it spikes as people cash in their gold for gems. The flip side of the population without the gold just converts cash to gems and never counters the trend.
While gold is always in demand, there’s just rarely a significant spike in demand population-wide. There’s never a limited time offer that costs 100 gold and you’d better cash in your gems now because it’s gone next week. There are no spikes in gold consumption that match the gem buying surges. That is undoubtedly by design.
About the only major inflation counter is from people trying to make a few coins off of the ratio-spikes. But due to the sizable value lost in conversion, they’ll only punch it down for as long as there’s a profit in it, and so gem-grab spikes always leave residual inflation.
Oh no, I’m being overwhelmed! Too… many… enemies… A stroke of luck, I’ve eliminated one of the threats! That’s just the opening I need to reach into my belt pouch and sift through the 400 pounds of copper ore, 15 trees worth of wood, a full pantry, an armory complete with thousands of arrows and rubber axes and my entire wardrobe. There, I find my second pet, a thousand pound brown bear named Bob. He quickly passes me a specially blended poultice I keep for just such medical emergencies. It does the trick and I’m back in the action!
Bob, fetch my Charrzooka, if you please.
Yea, how is it possible to carry 40,000 logs of wood in our bags anyway?
Obviously that’s why we only chop down small trees. You try and carry around 500 pounds of wood from big trees, that’s just crazy. 500 pounds of wood from small trees is way lighter. We just have to think about these things logically.
Oh no, I’m being overwhelmed! Too… many… enemies… A stroke of luck, I’ve eliminated one of the threats! That’s just the opening I need to reach into my belt pouch and sift through the 400 pounds of copper ore, 15 trees worth of wood, a full pantry, an armory complete with thousands of arrows and rubber axes and my entire wardrobe. There, I find my second pet, a thousand pound brown bear named Bob. He quickly passes me a specially blended poultice I keep for just such medical emergencies. It does the trick and I’m back in the action!
Bob, fetch my Charrzooka, if you please.
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I can imagine an alternate future in which they down-statted ascended gear to be exotics with infusion slots, turning them into purely fractal bait. I cannot imagine them eliminating them entirely. That would be the Etch-a-Sketch solution.
shake shake And now you’re naked.
If I could have any one speed signet ported over from another profession, it would definitely be Signet of Air from elementalist. 25% speed with an AoE blind and stunbreaker on a 30 second cooldown click.
Still, even that would be a hard sell for me on a mesmer. On a cramped skill bar, if I need to trim down to just one stun breaker, it would still be Blink.
The matter of soulbound is an interesting one when applied to resale that I hadn’t given a second thought. There’s certainly the concern of item economy. That is to say new legendaries are being created but rarely destroyed. By dead-ending them on a character, we keep the supply low. However, the TP tax does eat a chunk of the sale at every pass. If a 2000g item passes through the TP it eats 300g out of circulation. If it passes through the system twice, it does it again. The question is then which is going to ultimately maintain a more stable economy in a world where things appear out of thin air.
Hammer Mesmer… hmm…
Yup, mine would be named Haft. They’d say this charr Haft is one bad mesmer—
Shut your mouth!
But I’m talkin’ ’bout Haft.
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Thanks, that sounds exactly like what I want. That’ll save me from needing to experiment on my own.
Just a random brainstorm. Thoughts on the Confusing Cry trait being permanently rolled into it, making it pop both confusion and retaliation by default? I used to always roll with it when leveling and it seemed to give it at least some kick.
Runes of Speed are fine if you accept that you’re taking it just for the +25% and nothing else. The vitality and other benefits are basically worthless (swiftness duration? we’re taking this because we don’t have swiftness to buff) to a mesmer. It’s fine for off-sets of rare-quality armor. But if you’re breaking the bank for your main set exotics, you shouldn’t give up that much potential optimization just for a speed buff. Save up and spring for the good stuff.
I have joint problems, and some days the hours of holding down the right mouse button takes its toll. The community has asked for an alternative for this since beta and it’s been long enough that I need to accept that mouse-look toggle will never be a thing.
I’m looking into options to allow me to toggle my right-click on and off. I’m curious if anyone else has pursued this before me and found a solution they like. AutoHotKey proved very useful for me during the beta before modifier keys were allowed in key mappings, as well as many other accessibility and convenience needs I’ve had. I intend to experiment with that tonight, though it’s raw power is probably a little sketch as the ToS goes.
Are there any other thoughts?
In lieu of a phantasm, the mesmer rifle just summons a random zerker rifle warrior player from whatever he is doing, gives him full adrenaline and marks your target as hostile. If the target dies, it gives the warrior a champion loot bag and sends him on his way.
Elementalist AAs aren’t lacking for interesting (except for water scepter; that’s just lame). What they lack, in most cases, is oomph.
The staff generally gets a pass because its #1s are all functionally useful and the weapon as a whole is never taken for its raw single-target damage potential. It would’ve been nice if one of the attunements was focus-fire oriented, but that’s a topic all its own.
When it comes to dagger and scepter, there are problems. Both earth attacks and fire scepter have damaging condition riders, which are almost universally bad. The necessity of dancing into attunements without damaging conditions makes gearing for them pretty much pointless. Dagger fire does hurt, but sometimes requires you to straddle your target’s leg to do so. It’s an odd design choice for the “area damage” attunement and probably should have at least had piercing shots. Water barely tickles, though at least it has a purpose on the dagger by offering a semi-ranged option.
That mainly leaves it a one man show starring Air if you want sustained damage from your #1, which is probably why Fresh Air is such a popular trait. It’s why I find my elementalist so uncomfortable to play. It feels like I need to swap to the appropriate attunement for the situation, blow the cooldowns, then get back to air as fast as I can.
There’s a school of thought that I’m gradually warming too, though I admit isn’t perfect. There’s the idea that the #1 skill should be your damage skill and the others should be skills that you use when appropriate. If the appropriate time is “as soon as it cools down” then there’s a design problem.
I’m half onboard with that. I admit that there is utility in a well-timed burst, though there are weapons that do not fit even this idea. Ranger greatsword comes to mind. #2, Maul, is the weapon’s main source of damage. You’re actually better off setting #2 as your auto-attack and timing your #1 presses to better utilize the evade on the third strike in the chain.
Thief’s Pistol/Pistol #3, Unload, also creates this dilemma. Unload is the main source of damage. With no condition-on-crit traits that deal damage available to the thief, it is purely a power-based attack. Yet, the #1 is bleed-heavy and slaps like a wet noodle. Your damage is all #3. You’re not going to click #2, #4 or #5 because #1 can’t carry your damage through the down time while your initiative regenerates.
Elementalists are a pretty good example of this profession-wide. The idea that you’re expected to attunement-dance to keep accessing new long-cooldown attacks is an excuse for many of the #1 attacks to border on wasted finger-movement. Versatility isn’t a profession feature for them. It’s a mandatory activity to maintain any semblance of outgoing damage.
Ultimately, no reward in a video game has ever been worth the time, money or effort put into it. Never. It’s like a carnival game. You pay the man a dollar, throw a ball at a target, and if you win he gives you a fifty cent prize. It’s little more than a memento of the experience. The experience gives it context and significance. You had fun playing a game and won that. When it becomes about the prize, you become that guy who put $50 into a claw game because you had to have that stuffed pink whale.
Never go for the stuffed pink whale. He’s awkwardly shaped and bottom heavy.