Guild Wars 2

Great read and great post.

@Allie

I totally understand the implication/complication of making such massive changes but no one expects them to be done overnight. I think nearly everyone in this post agrees with the OP’s suggestions hence they must be valid to a good extent.

As long as the developers know about the general direction they should take when implementing future patches/fixes, I think most of us will be satisfied.

Personally, I think the FIRST thing to do is to increase capture points in pvp. Every point should be the size of FoeFire GY point. Most maps have the space available while some (Forest of Niflhel keep point) would require map re-adjustments. T’
Secondly we should deal with condition spam and ranged AoE damage in general.

These changes will tone down the AoE spam that is dominating the meta and make way for future changes covered by the OP which can be implemented gradually.

Advent Leader.1083:

The issue here stems from the fact that most attacks do not revert the stunned state when using a stunbreaker on air because launch is probably coded as a double stun – stun on air and stun on ground. That’s just my 2c, though.

Wow, I thought no one would have the brains to actually state the core issue but +1 to you mate. Although, your wrong about the double stun part. Launch is not a stun, its an animation like your aftercast.

The ISSUE is coding.

Stunbreakers break stuns but will not work on launch animations. I honestly would like stunbreakers to break the “launch/pull” animations (yay guardians/mesmers cant pull me anymore !!) but they are not coded that way.
So stop your QQ (or start a thread to change the coding) because launch/pull animations have to be waited out before popping your stunbreakers.

If you want a hotjoin match to be non zerg, the general rule is to make sure no one above rank 40+ is in it as they just want to glory/rank farm or test a new build heh.

I agree with the OP though. Testing or wanting to kill for fun is not a problem but you must sacrifice points if your on the road to losing. It makes no sense if I am playing a conquest game solely to kill. For that we need to have a deathmatch style hotjoin game

I will list some suggestions to help the game. Then I will give my 2c on your suggested class/spec issues.

WARNING : Wall of Text below

1 – Increase capture point area.
Either we get new gameplay modes or the kittening radius of capture points are increased to the SIZE of the Foefire graveyard point. This is should help against the current “AOE THEM DOWN BOYS” issue (I actually heard a commander say that in WvWvW yesterday lol). Imho AoEs from low cooldown abilities (GS/hammer swings and low cooldown fields) should have their AoE reduced to below that of the AoE of heals/area cleanse/group boons etc to promote proper positioning ie you want to stack fields/finishers but at the ideal spot not to get AoE smashed.

2 – Reduce the overall power/number of passive traits/utilities/runes etc and improve ways to use weapon skills on demand rather than the fire & forget (thanks to weapon swap on a cd) attitude ruling the gameplay at the moment.
Not much explanation here, you are rewarded more if you actually do something rather than faceroll.

3 – Get rid of spiking and condition spam.
No 1 shots should be possible (even on GC vs GC) whether it is 5-7 instant casts like the ele or cloak abuse like the thief (not so much now though) or a quad illusion shatter + blurred frenzy with sigil procs like a mesmer (if you think this is not instant, go watch osicat’s videos).
The other extreme is 6-7 conditions dropping on you from the sky which just cannot be cleansed (cd or feared) and dying without being able to do anything but limp.

A GC should be given at least 5-7 seconds when nuked by another GC for reaction time(for active defense skills). Getting vit/toughness should increase window ofc.

Thats all I got off the top of my head right now. Now moving on to your issues listed.

1 – I agree. Honestly, the phantasm “fix” was really not needed for this weapon (4 second 1200 ranged cripple honestly offset the mediocre damage it did prepatch). Now this weapon is a 1200 range bazooka (especially if ur glass) for blowing things up.
The cripple allows you to set up some nasty shatters by blinking onto your target and shattering + swapping to sword to finish. The only real problem I see with this weapon is the phantasm. It should be toned down for the singular fact that it slows and is AoE.

Mesmers have plenty of tools to survive so honestly, I feel that all their Phantasms should be nerfed and the Phantasm specced Mesmers should have access to offset these nerfs (about 70% of the nerf) along with being able to make their Phantasms splash. A trait could be made to increase the Izerker’s cleave radius, give the Iduelist piercing shots, Iwarden gets movement and the Image/Iwarlock attacks bounce.

2 – Simple fix would be to give the Arcane skills a small cast (1/2sec) while lowering their cd to compensate (20 down to 15 and 30 down to 20 untraited). You still do damage, you set up bursts more frenquently but your opponent gets an increased duration to react to your burst before he bites the dust.
As many have said, taking 2 arcane skills and LF screws with your survivability so I do not think nerfing damage or adding conditions to arcane spells will help the decent burst build that S/D can run now. (Elemental surge needs to become defensive instead of a feeble offensive trait to be useful)

3 – I have argued/complained about them enough and I also believe Necros themselves have suggested balance changes so I will not comment about them. In short, I see the real problem as fear being stack-able (like stealth) from multiple sources.

4 – Do not have enough experience fighting a good one to comment. Most of them I have fought get over confident when I get low and stop their evade chain for me to be able to stun and counter play them. I just made a thief recently to pvp with and have to say one thing though. The stealth nerf is more important than nerfing their evasion since evasion can be countered by waiting out their initiative to fall (they should not be able to go on forever) but stealth stacking is broken.

5 – I agree to this. While weakness is the Necro’s defense against burst classes, I do not understand why they have AoE application power as a defence lol. This condition needs to be single target only (or minor AoE for melee skills).

6 – Stealth is always a slippery slope to balance. Nerf it too hard and the classes that rely on it just melt in a fight. Off the top of my head, I would say smoke fields should not give stealth and should give something else (probably a few seconds of “evade”?).
With that change, I have no reason to see thief stealth stacking being overpowered (at least in pvp with the 4 second reveal). I do want reveal to be implemented in WvW though. Its just stupid that a thief can build pure GC and kill you with 8-9k backstabs and 6-7k heartseekers even though you have 1400-1600 toughness and then disappear + stomp you without any counters.

I think its a coding issue. I was killing some mobs in Orr and was near a dwayna statue (one which reduces heals on you). I still healed up pretty much the same so I think general code for “reducing healing” is not working

The numbers do make sense because celestial items are giving you more vitality and healing power for a sacrifice in only toughness from the mix of knight/zerker/cavalier items.

The thing is the offense trade-off since you lose power/prec and gain crit damage/condi damage, the net loss/gain of your offense will be based a lot on your weapon set/combat situation (zerg/1v1/small squad/pvp).

I am not much of a numbers guy but off the top of my head I say that S/X will be the best weapon set for a celestial setup. Next will be D/X and lastly staff (conditions on staff is nearly 0).

I wont be able to test celestial effectiveness in pve/wvw for a long time (I am poor )
but I will do some testing with the amulet in pvp with d/d and s/d with different builds and see what I come up with.

Thanks for making such a thread (and for messaging me /blush)

piffdaddy.8014:

3v3 deathmatch on a small arena would be a lot of fun.

Thinking about the good times I had with WoW 3v3. Managed to get duelist title (2100 rating) so I am nowhere near awesome but it was still a lot of fun.

Right until blizzard decided to shove a kitten up their game’s kitten and care about subs rather than the state of their game.

Navzar.2938:

I still don’t understand why they didn’t just allow RTL to affected by snares like other movement skills.

They did not allow snares to work because “chill” already destroys us if we are not able to cleanse it (since it affects our attunement cooldowns) so RTL is the only way to get out when chilled and wait for it to fall off (if you do not have water available nor any cleansing cds).

Julie Yann.5379:

oZii.2864:

LordByron.8369:

i hope you are not saying that warrior lacks survivability in WWW because being one of the best classes and most popular for WWW would suggest the opposite.

So much confusion everywhere between pvp and www

I think he is referring to sustain. I can jump in on my warrior if everything is up I can stay in for a bit and get out but you kind of have to get far out as in reset your health many times. A ele doesn’t really have to break combat just create enough space to get your heals off and go right back in if your running signet of restoration then you don’t really have to break combat often ele does have the ways to replenish health that don’t rely on a 30 sec cd or 25 if you take mending. I wouldn’t say it is far in a elementalists favor though warriors can stay in pretty decent after the recent buffs.

That is exactly what I meant. It’s true that the recent buffs have helped sustainability on the warrior but it still is no where near as good as the ele. Last night we had a 3 zerg fight for SM and fought trapped on the second floor for over 10 min. An awesome battle that we eventually lost but none the less, my ele survived to the end. My warrior (not a zerk but a well balanced WvW build) would have run out of heals 8 mins ago and died (without the help from Ele and guradian heals and buffs), even with Melandru Runes and Lemongrass food + cleansing ire and dogged march.

Yep. This is exactly what I meant. Warriors are great in WvW due to their mobility and ability to reset (and high damage helps). But in spvp/tpvp you cannot reset so easily (due to smaller area and conquest gamestyle), so you are forced to fight an uphill battle (since your sustain is pathetic). An ele can sustain very well (nearly as good as engi/guard) without the use of gimmics like stealth (thief). The only problem is base hp which is why nearly every ele in spvp/tpvp takes 20+ in water.

Julie Yann.5379:

I main a warrior just recently leveled an ele and I don’t get why all the complaining. Sure I can’t DPS like crazy like a warrior does but I can survive a lot more and support my team a lot better that with my warrior (banner warriors suck and are totally useless btw). I mainly WvW and do some PvE and even though I can’t faceroll pve content with my ele like I do on the warrior or guardian it is still pretty good (unlike the ranger which is awful in PvE). In WvW however the ele kicks kitten cause it is so versatile. I got a hybrid staff-D/D trait/gear setup where all I have to do is quickly swap weapons and a few major traits to go from zerg combat support to roaming pain in the kitten . If you can’t outrun a mesmer your should L2P.

QFT. Warrior has insane mobility with their GS/S setup but they CANNOT survive at all as compared to an Ele. Ele could use mobility but not survivability apart from a buff to the base hp though since we are forced into water to do this

Isha.4278:

So i have gotten a taste for spvp and wvw but i feel i dont really know how to build ele at all In spvp now i use a build that i’ve been using in PvE, namely Dagger Dagger with a focus on lightning, water and arcane. However, i think this build is quite nice in PvE i am fairly sure this build dont do to well in spvp. I have played a few days in pvp now and i have matches where i rack up points like crazy and i have even carried a game or two with this build but then i sometimes get completely stomped and cant really do much at all for the entire round (mainly when i fight against necros and engis for some reason)

I want to become better but i dont know what goes and not goes these days and would greatly appreciate if there are any in this forum that knows how to handle a ele in pvp

Well if you want to stand a chance against necro/engi you need to trait/utilize condition removal a lot.

This is a build I use in pvp

You can swap the heal to signet and the Cleansing fire to Lightning Flash or Mistform if your against a non condition heavy team (unlikely).
Basically your condition removal comes from your heal (try to Line of Sight or pop stability/arcane shield when you use it to avoid interruption) and your cleansing fire utility.
Water 5 also removes 1 condition and so does dodge rolling in water and attuning to water (removes 2).
You wont be bursting much since your critical damage is low, but you will have near constant fury plus with 25 stacks of precision you should have around 45-50% crit. The main thing is to stack might with your runes (getting hit) and your sigil (swapping attunement) along with some blast finishing (earth 4/5/dodge) in your fire fields.

I have stacked upto 15-16 might and the damage at that point gets scary (even conditions).

Good luck and remember pvp is about adapting. Swap your utilities and traits around for the best effect in the current situation.

Good luck in the mists!!

S/D can “cleave” just as well as D/D provided you get your mobs stacked nice and tight. D/D has more mobility+survivability ofc.
Currently I am using S/D (might stacking rules) for pve/dungeons, D/D for spvp/tpvp and Staff for WvWvW.

TLDR: I use all my weapon skills!!! (Except you focus, im sorry )

LordByron.8369:

Fishbait.6723:

Simple fact is, the RTL wasn`t nerfed due to battlegrounds, pve etc. It was nerfed due to noobs not immobilising them in WvWs & constantly crying that it was OP.

Ele` got nerfed (several times over) because those idiots didn`t learn how to stun/immob` someone, whereas they should`ve been told L2P.

once again false.

Why to guess stuff already written everywhere.

RTL was nerfed due to spirit watch PvP mode….
The mistake was even designing spirit watch…but instead of fixing it was easier to nerf into the ground ele.

Devs don t care of WWW and PvE for balancing……the few times they do because something is blatantly OP they mess it up even worse. (confusion)

I highly doubt that because RTL moves for only 600 units (half its distance) in spirit watch when you have the orb. I cannot LF with orb either (I think you can use dagger fire 3.. not sure) so mobility even with a 20-30sec RTL would not really be great compared to my warrior who can savage-leap/bulls-charge almost covering 60% the distance from the orb to a point.

RTL was nerfed because in high level tpvp the 0/10/0/30/30 ele (pre heals nerfs) could get out of far point (perfect map is foefire) to go mid and heal his buddies and get back to the far/home point back in time to stop it from being decapped.

MaXi.3642:

no…
because splitting community would cause longer queues etc, we already saw what happened with paid tournaments, good on paper only…
i like Deathmatch, but only 5v5 as an additional MAP for tournament rotation, not as another queue

I enter my free tpvp ques in under 1minute most of the time. I really doubt having a separate que will “break” the community. Players will alternate game modes to avoid getting bored which in the long run obviously helps the game.

Lue.6538:

I do understand that it is infuriating to face a combo consisting of for example, dual necros, but I would rather see everyone be allowed to play whatever they want than to put restrictions on it.

That said I consider a 2v2 arena highly unlikely to happen.

It is also annoying to people in said team. I run a d/d semi bunker and I really get annoyed when a mirror ele pops into my team.
2v2 and 1v1 is just impossible to balance. Devs should know that by now. It does not matter if you have a “dps/healer/tank” game or you have a “self reliance” game. The variables are just too complex. 3v3 and 5v5 are the best examples of easier balance.

ahuba.6430:

I just don’t understand why people ask for 2v2 3v3 5v5 and skip 4v4. Attached to wow much?

No, its just that real men que in ODD numbers. Trolling aside, balance is easier for 3v3 and 5v5. 2v2 is stupid imo.

Geff.1930:

I get what you are saying, about the stunbreakers atleast. If you are building condition removal you are indirectly still building for damage because you have to be alive to do damage…

Different classes get different mileage from stun breaks. Most stuns can be avoided through a variety of ways pre-application dodge/block/invul etc. (exception: Baslisk venom) And stun skills generally tend to be on a long cooldown. Not so with conditions, as most conditions are applied through either auto-attacks or ground spam. If you are a ranged character and can confidently avoid ground spam then you might have the luxury of investing into CC-breaks/immunity.

Consider also, about half the classes in the game rely heavily on conditions. These include rangers, necros, eles and to a lesser extent engis. Thiefs (caltrap/evasion thiefs) and warriors can also spec for condition, but seldom do. Without adequate condition removal/avoidance you already know the outcome of every fight against them before you even engage.

Here is the core problem. I equate stuns = stunbreakers because both are on fairly long cooldowns. The same does not hold for conditions (from CERTAIN classes cough engi/necro cough).

Conditions on weapon skills can probably be matched with 1-2 cleansing utilities/traits.
Now we have conditions coming from procs (burning on crit blah blah) and conditions coming from utilities.
It does not take a genius to figure out there is more condition application possible from these classes as compared to standard cleansing.
I honestly feel engi/necro condition builds should be brought down to the levels of other classes (rifle/sword warrior or s/d condition ele or death-blossom/caltrop thief or scepter/staff mesmer). These classes have condition builds that are strong but negligible application power (they can put 2-3 conditions at a time at most or stack 1 condition really high like bleed) compared to engi/necro.

TLDR: Tone engi/necro condition build to the level of others listed and BUFF them in other places to have viable builds (I think engis do cause I see a lot of zerker burst engi right now). Then we can normalize the cleansing from certain high powered AoE cleansers (ele/guardian/ranger) and have a balanced condition meta

Allie Murdock.8152:

Assuming this isn’t sarcastic/troll… No, thank you!

It really means a lot to have players like you to come and encourage us. Obviously this goes without saying; we are human beings. We put our heart and soul into this work, and to have the support from you guys helps so much.

I know there is an internet (text) wall between us, but there is a face, a personality, a player behind this post, and every other post from us. We’re a family of incredible hard-working people.

Yeah yeah, it’s sappy, but imo it just goes to show how awesome our community is.

<3

Honestly, I would say the only player who has a right to complain objectively is one who has seen your company/resources to know that you guys are doing all you can. Since that is not practical, every complaint in the forum has to be taken with a grain of salt

Caffynated.5713:

sorrychief.2563:

@demon

actually have seen people in hotjoin who run that setup. the damage is pretty funny. when downed it’s plain scarey to be anywhere near them.

Try putting some armor on and they’re a lot less scarey to be around.

30 VI VII XI 20 VI X 0 0 20 V VIII
Zerker amulet
Scholar runes

I would not say 8k damage over 4 seconds is less

But I do agree that staff needs something to make it a bit more solo or pair viable.
On a side note, I met a staff ele (0/0/10/30/30) in tpvp yesterday and he did well holding point with a bunker against 3+. The problem is with staff you need a bunker (guardian mostly) to help you survive while you spam AoEs around yourself. It is not optimal I agree but it does work very well

Staff for now has its place in one area only. WvWvW. Period. It beats any “dagger” or “scepter” in fights with more than 20+ players. The huge AoE plus combo fields makes it the best ranged snipe weapon in game.

Caffynated.5713:

The biggest problem with staff is that it needs people to stand still in order to do any damage and it has very limited ability to make anyone stand still. Secondary is that it does far less damage than S/D and D/D with no way to maintain distance and make use of its 1200 range. A ranged weapon with low damage and no ability to maintain range is just bad.

Staff scales the best with damage though. Run 30/20/0/0/20 and you will see what I mean. A single lava font will kill some one. Sadly, you need extensive support which is just too hard in tpvp/spvp. Easier in WvWvW

aydenunited.5729:

…for increased activity and response on the sPvP boards. I’ve been around since launch and this at least ‘feels’ like the most transitional time in PvP since then, and it feels like more focus is finally starting to be put into this aspect of the game.

Thank you for making your presence known, and here’s to hoping the communication only continues to grow from here.

+1 to Anet

The problem now is that if you want to “deal” with the condition heavy meta, you screw yourself in terms of stunbreakers/damage ending up with a subpar build which (sometimes) still wont help you against conditions

dukevonart.2691:

Fire Aura would be more interesting to me if it applied burning in an aoe around yourself, perhaps something like one second of burning every second during its duration? Not as needed, but the other auras could have similar effects like Magnetic aura applying cripple, frost aura applying chill, and lighting aura applying weakness.

Other auras are fine. Fire just need to be tweaked a little. Might stacking is ok if you can take the hits but a non bunker ele really cant take the hits (and you need to invest in our damage traitline to get the aura in the first place).

Off the top of my head, the simplest change to fire aura would be to make it burn everyone around you (360 radius). A 2 sec burn applied every sec plus apply a 2 sec burn for every ranged attack made against you (might on getting hit removed ofc).

Lue.6538:

As for the profession limitations/bans for a potentional 3v3 arena? I gotta say that sounds horrible, people should be allowed to play it any way they so choose.

It is only to help level the playing field against fotm specs. It should have been implemented in WoW as well. It is stupid as hell facing 2 classes with the same spec (fotm) and get wrecked for no reason.
Ofc, WoW had diminishing returns to minimize this but since GW2 does not, 2 classes of the same spec (terror necro/bunker guards etc) simply should be paired on the same team.

Romek.4201:

3v3 arena would work fine in guildwars 2
just bring in some league of legend rules and done

- each class only 1x
- both teams can BAN 1 class

done and would give content + fun for monthhhhs and dont need any balancing stuf

The each class 1x should be implemented in tpvp as well. (At least if the trait lines match, 2 of the same class should not be paired in 1 team).

I do not think the ban is a good idea although it did me LOL.

2v2 and 1v1 will be near impossible to balance in almost all games so I would really like a 3v3 but conquest game style will not work. Deathmatch (first to kill and point based DM both) will work but the map sizes/stealth have to be adjusted for this. They can make small maps and add other interesting game modes such as mine cart (from TF2) or hold the line (forgot the game. The mode is basically stopping your enemies from reaching your base).

In fact, I do not know why they have not put in more game modes in the normal tpvp, conquest turned into what I always feared it would. Bunkers and AoE all around lol.

Heh. I have not seen your fan club post here yet defec
Nice win btw.

First step to toning down the condition meta is to increase capture areas. Imho, all capture points should at least be as large as the Graveyard point in Legacy of Foefire.
Then people can actually have room to fight inside it instead of the current meta where the bunker stands in it and his team rains AoE hell on the point/enemy team.

Second step to toning down the condition meta is to remove stability from the boon strip/removal/conversion list. Stability is a long cd boon and popping your 60-90 sec cooldown for 5-10 sec of it, only to see it converted into fear or stolen by your enemy is ridiculous.

The skill shots suggestion is a very good one but as posted above, it will require a major overhaul. They could make a few abilities skill shots but it has to be done carefully (I say start with thief heh).

For all the Necros who say engi nades are better than marks, something important that you are forgetting is travel time which counts for counterplay (dodges). Since marks have none of this, it would make sense to add an trigger delay (small one) to them.

PinCushion.7390:

I quite like that it has 2 completely different uses, and I have to choose whether I want to use it offensively or save it for a stun-break. I wish more skills were like that.

I like it to but the problem is when you do use it for a stunbreak, you get a buff which may not work well in your favor. (I know you can swap attunement while stunned but pulling that + GoEP off takes too long).

Kamui.3150:

For the cooldown reduction traits, one sugesstion I had in a thread a little while back was to also have it affect the elemental utilities we head. So the Fire one would affect Cleansing Flame, Signet of Fire, Conjure Flame, and the others would affect their elemental equivalents. It’s probably not a GREAT boost, but it was a neat thought, at least IMO.

I also agree that lowering the base cooldown on attunement swapping should be done, although I don’t think that Arcana should be tweaked to just be doubled Boon Duration. I dunno what exactly it could do, but lowering cooldown on base swapping would still be a good idea.

I actually made a suggestion thread a while back specifically regarding traits, some of them were probably a bit OP, but I think I had SOME good ideas. Check it out if you get a chance, by some miracle I might have had a decent idea.

Linky!

Wow umm that is a long read

I will do it later today when I get the time and comment on your posts in this thread.

TGSlasher.1458:

Grandmaster Fire Trait:
Elemental Grandmaster:
Allows you to use enemy elemental Fields for finisher (Water/Ice and Fire).

or

Grandmaster Fire:
Combat Elementalist Medic:
Remove Burning, Chill and Bleeding. Heal (same as EA water) health and regenerate the same over 5 seconds.

---

Suggested Change for Fire Aura:
Gain a fire shield / aura for 3 seconds. Fire shield burns nearby foes, removes burning and chill and makes you immune to burning and chill (after all, you are surrounded by fire).

Honestly, I see the current GM fire traits as decent. One gives might stacking power and the other gives increased field duration+fury.
I like your first suggestion (glad you mentioned fire/water/ice otherwise that would be extremely OP lol). Fire Aura suggestion is also nice, who would not say no to more chill protection.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Demon.5082:

Please no more stealth. I want stealth reduced in this game and not increased. As a condition clone mesmer, stay near your clones. AoE damage will kill them most of the time anyway. Another trick is to stand still when safe to confuse people (it works a lot)

Condition mesmers need more ways to survive I agree but stealth is not the answer :-)

Even if another 3second stealth option was added we wouldnt be overpowered or prema stealthed. Having to take a Utility AND Elite for defense is very annoying, combined with the fact we have VERY little/no access to a REASONABLE length swiftness makes escaping without Stealth impossible.

A timed phase retreat or blink followed immediately by decoy lets you get away 80% of the time. Cast mass invis when in decoy stealth and no one will ever catch you. Mass invis is defensive in general but you can do a lot of cool things with it like a group ambush or clutch revives. Like I said, we need a few defenses maybe and some movement buff (25% signet is ideal for this) but not stealth.

Please no more stealth. I want stealth reduced in this game and not increased. As a condition clone mesmer, stay near your clones. AoE damage will kill them most of the time anyway. Another trick is to stand still when safe to confuse people (it works a lot)

Condition mesmers need more ways to survive I agree but stealth is not the answer :-)

Somebody post this in the bugs thread to get it tested and posted there by josh.

Were you the one who posted on my aura thread?

Either-way, I feel this is a great suggestion.

We have very poor access to auras outside of d/d (even theirs is moderate at best). It’s about time we get a utility that gives us auras. Having a stun breaker on an offensive buff is terrible design. If they wanted a stun breaker on a glyph, the storms glyph is actually a better choice lol.

Fire aura has to be buffed (other auras are fairly balanced) and we can chuck them directly on this skill. Gain an aura based on attunement.

As for improving the skill without changing it, I would say it should give a better uptime on the procs. Right now, with the exception of scepter air -1, we can barely get off a proc once every 10 seconds or more. I say, change the proc rate to 100% on crit or 50% on hit. The skill has an internal cooldown anyways so I do not see it being too strong.
Another suggestion is to reduce the cd to 15 sec and duration to 10 sec.
This will make it more versatile and the stun break part can actually be useful.

Posts like these make me glad I stopped gw2 for a year.

I totally missed the Ele d/d godmode since I never played then.
I just started the game again 3 months back and see only equal numbers of nerfs and buffs :-)

Do not get me wrong. I want a LOT of things changed and fixed with our class but I do not deny that we are pretty powerful right now.

Nice responses guys. I will edit the main post to add some of the interesting ideas flying around here.

@covenn
Yes we are suggesting similar things but the difference being you suggesting we lose our intelligence stat. ANet may reduce the value of that stat but I doubt they will drop it entirely.

@Blaine Tog
Ah I see your idea. It is a nice idea though the issue is a lot of our on swap traits/boons will have to be redesigned to compensate for the increase in availability of attune swap.
That said, I would love it if I could go into an attune and use 1 -2 skills and swap out and back in a few seconds later. It is much more entertaining doing that rather than sitting in an attune spamming sub par auto attacks waiting for my fields/finishers to come back up. ( I run s/d so you get the issue heh)

I agree with people who say fresh air is not a solution and just a lazy temporary fix. I really hope they do not make this into a design direction and add other traits like “fresh earth” where you get back your earth attune when you are hit for 10% hp or something. It sounds nice on paper but it will make our class too reactionary rather than action/planning.

@dukevonart

Are you sure the healing ripple trait itself has a 9 sec cd? There is no way to test this since we cannot go into water faster than once every 9 sec. Like I posted to Blaine, if they balance our on swap boons/traits around these changes then I have no problem with them. But design-wise, it is very tricky (kinda like the warriors suggesting for f2 skills for defense. Good suggestion but complex to follow through)

If you want to tpvp with a mesmer, shatter is your most effective bet.
Some niche builds might work (retal or PU boon build) but they just won’t compare to an engi or guardian bunker.
With regards to tpvp, a mesmer is no where near overpowered. They have powerful 1v1 builds but since they rely on stealth for target dropping, they just can’t hold points effectively. So please do not tell me condition mesmers are viable or mesmers are overpowered when the real pvp ie tpvp (this is what ANet should balance classes around) shows otherwise. If ANet introduces a death match or duel style gameplay then we can start talking about nerfing Mesmers.

Necros with terror builds are too powerful 1v1 to be equally powerful in a group fight which is why players say they are OP. Jumping into a hotjoin game with a necro and getting chain cc-ed by 2 players and dying does not mean you are not OP.

TLDR : Mesmers need viable condition and phantasm builds (lower phantasm damage and give them small aoe attacks) and Necro terror builds have to be toned down.

PS: To all the smart kitten Necros saying nothing changed in this patch to make Necros OP, why are you worried if some of the patch buffs ( terror and fear) are reverted?? It should not make a difference right?? Nothing changed.
:)

This has been suggested to death but I do not know why ANet can not do this instead of implementing band aid solutions like cleansing ire.

Some one should keep bumping the thread to keep it alive.

Slomoshun.6317:

Sounds fun…which means nothing close to this will ever happen.

The sad truth.

Originally I wanted to run Sw/Sw + Rifle for my pvp warrior but after a lot of experimenting the offhand is just too meh. Stacking only bleeds does not help against a smart cleanse. I think the 4 skill should add 4 stacks of torment and RIP should have a minor leap finisher + add 4 more stacks of torment. This would be a very nice change.

They should reduce the cd of Rampage to 90 sec (all transforms should be in at this cd).

The stability should be permanent during the transform and the 1-5 skills should have the cds lowered slightly.

Longbow is better for mid range fights with choke points/point capture fights.

Rifle wins in the sniping competition since it comes with 1200 range and has no projectile animation. A rifle is terrible once your opponent notices you (you cant land reliable f1 anymore).

In PvE i just think its a matter of AoE versus Single target.

Player Character.9467:

Jzaku.9765:

Player Character.9467:

YuiRS.8129:

Some of our traits also don’t make sense, like Distracting Strikes requiring an interrupt, while none of our Condi weapons have interrupts and taking Physical skills just to make this traits work is a giant waste.

>.>
<.<
o.O
“Some of our traits also don’t make sense, like Slashing Power requiring a greatsword, while none of our Condi weapons are greatswords and…”

I am unsure if you even understood that. Distracting strikes applies confusion. Which is a condition that scales with condition damage. Which none of the interrupting weapons have application of. Which means that if you spec into distracting strikes it’s going to be very hard to apply other types of conditions making it a very bad trait for condition builds.

But the thing that makes the least sense about that trait is that interrupting people means stunning them, which means they are incapable of doing things, which means they take no damage from it for a few seconds while they are stunned.

It applies 4 stacks for 8 seconds (base, also it’s 9.6 with the condi duration from just getting the trait) so the duration of the stun isn’t going to eat it up. In a condi build you apply it using an offhand shield (sword&board) which you would hybrid, not pure condition dmg. As it sits in the strength line however, it is also positioned nicely for CC builds (but not an X/X/30/30/X pure defense build) to grab a bit of power, extra time on cripples/immobilizes, and to stick confusion on enemies between CC skills.

If they stuck it in arms a hybrid build would have to pick between it and blademaster. If it were in defense then it would be ignored for cleansing ire, in tactics you would be making a supporty build and there are much better traits again at the master level, and for discipline there’s mobile strikes. In strength it provides an option for somebody using the line for condition duration.

But the real problem is when you do confuse him/her with shield, you usually perform a flurry to stack bleeds. Since you root them during flurry, they do not usually perform actions (outside of cleanse attempts or full defensive cooldowns) making your confusion tick once or if your really lucky twice.

Almost starting to think he has a cult

redslion.9675:

Demon.5082:

JETWING.2759:

Mesmer GS are taking 3100+ all time with Spatial Surge, and sword are granting 2,5s evasion with low CD.
This no talking about teleport, invis, and a lot of other tricks.

You mean doing 3k auto attacks? That will only be true if they are at max range and you have 0 toughness in which case you should be taking heavy damage. Sword evasion is needed because a light armor class needs defenses to get into melee without getting blown up (even warriors know the problem of melee at the moment). Teleport and invis are on long cds and usually cant be repeated more than once in a fight. I agree a mesmer has a lot of defenses but run a condition build on necro/engi (even warrior) and watch them melt to your conditions :-P

Except for the fact that mesmers fight at range, thanks to phantasms.

So yeah, they can kite while dealing damage, using LoS and when they are caught they become invulnerable.

At least Aegis from chaos armor was removed…

The best way to kill a mesmer, as a warrior (and as some engi specs), is to lure them into narrow spaces, where their escapes are less effective.

WHAT? Teleports on long cooldown?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Phase_Retreat

This is why I say Mesmers are a hotjoin class more than a tpvp one lol. Same as thieves. The whole phantasm build is OP in games where people do not focus the mesmer but they are horrid in tpvp games where the phantasm mesmer does not do much by running and hiding as he is not providing AOE damage or helping defend/cap the point.

Also, FYI
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Savage_Leap is twice the range of http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Phase_Retreat (tooltip is bugged, it just has 300 range) and has a lower cd.

But I do agree that Phase Retreat should not break stuns since its on that low a cd.

The best way to kill a Mesmer is to immobilize him and nuke/condition spam him (even if he stealths he will be in the same spot).

Leg Specialist and Pin Down are the best anti Mesmer tools for a warrior. (Bola is also good but can be dodged due to the stupid cast).

BrunoBRS.5178:

i love the focus skills on air and water (visually speaking), loathe them on fire and earth (not particularly fun skills to use either), and think the devs forgot that eles could use them sometime before the first betas rolled out. 50s cooldown on a 2s knockdown. 25s cooldown on a 3s chill that does far less damage than the autoattack. it’s just silly.

50 sec cd on a 2sec stun is fine if its AOE. But since its single target, it should be around 30sec.
The chill should be boosted to 5sec or the cd should be brought down to around 15 sec.

Wulf.5431:

ONe thing for focus that would be a simple, should-have-already-been-implemented buff would be to make magnetic wave an aura.

Yea I just made another thread suggesting more auras on all our wepons except D/D.
Traits that proc auras on signet use/glyphs would also be really good defense outside of our terribly long cd cantrips.

covenn.7165:

Fixing elementalist is quite easy tbh…. (core issues, not specific weapon ability issues)

There are two things that are chaining us into a minimum of 20-30 arcane.

I agree with the Arcane problem but I doubt ANet would remove the “Intelligence” stat in Arcana because that is a part of the class design for the game.

Hence, I feel the simplest solution would be to reduce attunements to 12 second base and have 30 points in arcana reduce it to 9. People will run at least 10 in arcana due to the “elemental attunement” trait (which honestly should be baseline but we can talk about that later) so any general ele will still get a 11 second attunement cd (instead of the current 13).

Blaine Tog.8304:

If your playstyle is to continuously enter an attunement, blow all your spells, then leave the attunement, then I agree that that trait would be overkill. However, if you really wanted to focus on, say, dishing out damage with Fire, that sort of trait could make it less punishing to your DPS to switch to Earth for a clutch Magnetic Aura. It’d be kinda like how the Engineer will frequently swap into and out of a kit for a single skill use.
Also, I think you made a mistake in your formatting as there seemed to be a lot more text in that post than was displayed when I was writing this response.

Yea I fixed that thanks.
Well the problem is not about playstyle, the problem is ANet does not want us to sit in 1 or even 2 attunements and swap out to 3/4 when needed (that is how it should be imho). That was stated by Izzy at his livestream. “Elementalist has 20 skills so we kinda expect them to use all 20”. Its stupid but yea its their “design” so I do not see that changing.

dukevonart.2691:

A question for people reading this thread regarding the attunement swap cooldowns:
How much of an effect would we see if the cooldown for an attunement started when you swapped to that attunement?

I am sorry but this will be very OP (at least for pvp). Imagine, you are at 50% hp, you get into water and blow your heals to get to 100%. Already, around 5-6 seconds has passed. Now if you get out of water, you are supposed to be vulnerable to conditions/burst (unless you have utilities) for the next 9 seconds, but with this design you will barely need 3 seconds before water is back up again (I agree the skills will be on cd but shifting into water when traited in water itself is a 1600hp heal with a condition cleanse and another heal+cleanse if you have EA).

Navzar.2938:

3) Rework Glyph of Elemental Power, since it’s a weird skill for stun breaking. Maybe make it work similarly to venom skills or like avatar of grenth for a short duration.

A very nice suggestion in my other “Auras” thread was that they make GoEP grant an aura based on attunement instead of random procs (which already exist in the Arcane 25 trait).

Thanks for bumping/suggestions/feedback guys. I will update the OP with more suggestions. (I feel stupid for not reserving more posts at the start of the thread )

Benji.9203:

I made a thread about making signet actives be auras that correspond with the given element.

Air signet > shocking aura
Etc

I still think it would be a cool idea IMO

This is a very nice idea although I would see some people complaining about losing the earth/fire signet immob&burning.

This got me thinking. They could add a trait like the Fire 9 trait in all other trait lines giving us 3-5 sec of frost/shocking/magnetic auras on use of signets. This would definitely bring back signet builds.

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

let glyph of elemental power give us auras corresponding with the element we’re in.
Then I’d be happy.

This is another nice idea. GoEP being a stunbreak should be defensive so it should give an aura of your attunement for 5-7 sec.

Along these lines, I feel Glyph of storms giving a field for each storm would make that glyph a very nice one as well.

I have always liked glyphs more than signets/cantrips because they are that much more tactical.
Want might? Use glyphs in fire.
Regen? Water.
Speed? Air.
Protection? Earth.

Sadly, my glyph build is obsolete now that conditions are the heavy meta so Ether Renewal is just too good compared to GoEH.

TGSlasher.1458:

Or, increase fire damage by 10% and burn attacking foes.
Or, fire aura applies more then 1 sec buring.
Or, fire aura applies 1 sec of burning to attacking foe, you also gain 1 stack of retaliation for the duration of the aura.
Or, fire aura burns foes attacking for 1 sec and removes 1 condition (or, removes chill and bleeding).

The easiest thing they can do is to make fire shield passively apply 1 second burn on nearby enemies (360 radius) every second while giving the caster 1 stack of might every second.
This would bring it on par with the other auras.

Blaine Tog.8304:

More Aura access would be awesome. Actually, how cool would it be if it Auras were positioned as our profession’s key active defense, rather than heavy investment in Water and pounding heals like crazy?

ANet should learn to place good defensive mechanisms in fire/air/earth trait lines so that we are not forced into water.
Making fire aura better would help fire defense a lot and improving air (just a little) would help air too. (Tempest defense cd should be 30 sec and the 20% damage to stunned targets should be removed + Glyph traits should be improved).
Earth has some good traits, but it can still be made better with bug fixes.

Josh Mitchell.1596:

Adastra.9821:

Josh Mitchell.1596:

Lava font is supposed to receive a 30% fire field duration extension, which it does not. I am not referring to damage ticks in this instance. The duration is 4 seconds with or without the trait slotted. The DoT should stop but the fire field should remain to combo for an additional 1.2 seconds.

Adastra.9821:

Works for lava font afaik. It gives 5 ticks of damage. Also with this trait, it is also possible to blast lava font by casting eruption after.

By blast, I meant to use the blast finisher from eruption (earth 2). I’m sure most staff elementalists are used to casting eruption first then lava font, but this trait along with the recent changes allow you to do it the other way around if you’re fast enough.

Ah I see now. Had a chance to test in PvP. It does receive a duration increase so you can combo eruption after, but the increase is not to 5.2 seconds and the tooltip is not updated.

Also, upon further testing, the fire combo field from Arcane Abatement does not receive a 30% duration increase. It does grant fury per the trait, however.

@ Demon: I think you mean Scepter Air 1 / Scepter Earth 1. Additionally, some channel skills cause the effect tooltip icon to pop up where others do not.

Yea I meant those. Stupid Iphone numbers …

vicious.5683:

Necro is balanced now. L2P

tom.7468:

I can kill anything with condition necro even burst thieves and can win several 2 vs 1. Warrior is pretty much a free kill not a threat at all.

I just had to sum these two comments for a laugh ;-D

I am all for improving rangers after the massive pet nerf but shouldnt this thread be in the ranger forum (even if its more pvp related) to get better feedback from your community?
:-P

I think “channeled” means skills that start doing damage before the “cast” is completed thus making it a “channel” instead of a “cast”.

Examples would be Scepter Air 1 and Scepter Earth 1. Staff Fire 5 should also come under this category.

I still think the traits are bugged not to affect all the channels. We really should get a DEV reply on this.

Anyone else feel that we have very limited access to auras? (Exception is the D/D weapon set).

I wanted to make a thread to get some feedback/tips from the community so I can add them to my other thread.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Suggestions-for-improving-fixing-eles/first#post2388416.

Anyway, these are my suggestions.

Tempest defense/Rune of earth/Rune of fire – The cds on these have to be brought down. Maybe 30 or 40 sec cd would be good. (fire needs 20 – 30 imho).

Focus Fire 4 – Cd should be brought down.

Staff and Scepter need one of their skills turned into an aura. Staff has access to frost armor via blasting the ice field but that is really too situational, it also has magnetic aura but that is still 1 aura vs D/D which has 2 (3 if you leap finish the fire field and 4 if you spec/rune for it).

TLDR: Auras are our thing. Make it feel like that by giving us better access to encourage aura traits.

Blaine Tog.8304:

What if the cooldown traits also chopped off 20% of the attunement cooldown for that element? The Air attunement one could be something different to make it not conflict with Fresh Air, or it could also reduce Fresh Air’s ICD by 20%.

That is an interesting idea however the problem I see with it is that if you have this new cd-reduction trait + 30 points in arcana, your attunement cd is going to be in the range of 4-5 seconds which although good, is pointless since your skills have much longer recharge rates. Of course, this change would make trait lines more attractive than arcana so overall I agree.

TGSlasher.1458:

TL;DR
How would this change work?
Step 1: Remove Cleansing Wave from Dagger and replace it with Gust (chill 3 sec 20 cd)
Step 2: Put Cleansing Wave as Focus Water 5 and move Comet to Water 4
Step 3: Revert changes to Ride the Lightning, remake it a 20 or 25 cd skill but 1200 range

This allows the /D to maintain its damage and movement, whilst moving bunker to the Focus (the eles defensive weapon).

Here are my focus rework suggetions.

Fire 4 – Increase the radius/duration and lower cd (it should be even lower than Dagger fire 4 since it does no damage)

Fire 5 – Reduce the cd to that of shocking aura and change the burn on attack to a blind.

Water 4 – Reduce the cd by 5 seconds or make it an AoE around target.

Water 5 – Swap with Dagger water 5 and reduce cd by 5 – 10 seconds.

Lightning 4 – Its fine.

Lightning 5 – Make it PBAoE.

Earth 4 – Its fine.

Earth 5 – Its fine.