Guild Wars 2

Alex Shatter.7956:

I feel like adding confusion and torment to elementalist skills would be out of character, and would kitten off the mesmers and revenants. I think the best option for a condition elementalist build would be a new elite specialization. Poison could come from smog based fire attacks, or confusion could be somehow made into an air / water thing (a rehashing of Mind Freeze and Mind Shock from GW1, perhaps).

Would it be out of character? Perhaps.

But I don’t see how the potential irritation of mesmers and revenants would matter. Yes, confusion and torment are the main conditions of the respective classes, but they don’t have a monopoly on it. Thieves can venomshare torment with Skale Venom and Throw Gunk is a relatively frequent stolen skill that gives access to confusion. Engineers have Pistol 3, Bomb Kit 3, and Tool Kit 3 for confusion. Mesmers can torment with the first two attacks of their scepter auto and Scepter 2 (on block). That is not a full list, and this is before we delve into traits.

I will say this though, I’m not married to the idea of Arc Lightning getting confusion. The thought behind the suggestion was to give me some reason to maintain the full channel. But it won’t fix the quality-of-design problem that Air Scepter has, in my opinion.

The idea of an condi-oriented elite spec is definitely nice for sure, but I think there is (or should be) potential to have a solid condi damage option without it.

I will be taking a strictly PvE perspective.

Scepter in my eyes could stand to have some improved diversity in condi damage – bleeds and burns are in and of themselves fine, but they are found in the fire and earth attunements respectively (not counting offhands, utilities, and secondary sources like sigils). The other two are sort of left hanging.

With that in mind I would suggest some changes:

Ice Shards (Water 1): Inflicts 1 stack of Torment (4 sec) per hit, for a total of 3 stacks when all 3 icicles hit.

Shatterstone (Water 2): Instead of the 5 vulnerability stacks, the explosion now inflicts 3 stacks of bleeding (similar to the Icebrood Elementals´ version) and 2 seconds of chill. Would also be nice if the sound effect was updated to reflect the shorter animation.

Arc Lightning (Air 1): At the final hit of stage 1, inflicts 1 stack of confusion (3 sec). At the final hit of stage 2, inflicts 1 stack of confusion (5 sec). At the final hit of stage 3, inflicts 2 stacks of confusion (8 sec).

Last week (before the patch) I finished the third chapter and joined an order (Whispers) with a charr revenant. During the final two missions there was an issue with my warband members.

Some details about my character: He is Ash Legion, his sparring partner is Clawspur, and during the first chapter I choosed to aid the Blood Legion Centurion.

This means that my warband consisted of Clawspur, Yahuk Fellstrike, and Wroda the Quick.

However, when I entered Hero’s Canton during Undead Detection to choose an order to join, there was another one standing at the same spot as Wroda, which was Cimmara Pistolwhip – who should only be there if you are Iron Legion and choose to do the mission Deadly Force.

After watching the first cinematic with Rytlock but before conversing with Clawspur, I also noticed that there had been a second Cimmara Pistolwhip generated during the cinematic, meaning there were now two of them.

I thought this was just an anomaly, but when I started Whispers in the Dark, both Cimmara Pistolwhips were at the scene and persisted throughout it.

I should note that although she was there, I couldn’t have any dialogue with her (unlike the rest of the Ash warband).

I will add my voice to this, having experienced a hard performance drop in FPS as well as sound and rendering lags. I’ve had several battles in complete silence against enemies that haven’t been rendered at all.