Guild Wars 2

Player Static.9841 [Jane Woo]

Total games played solo queue: 26
Current rank solo queue: 9,000 (highest rank, 605)

Total games played team queue: 528
Current rank team queue: 9,000 (highest rank, 959)

How you can sit there and believe your opinion carries any weight whatsoever when it comes to what is due to veteran players is what is truly hilarious and hypocritical.

Yes, I know… your disrespectful and ill-conceived opinions are completely unrelated to your lack of experience and success in pvp, or the fact you have everything to gain and nothing to lose from the rank changes. It certainly has nothing to do with your jealous resentment or sense of victimization toward players who achieved a higher rank and leaderboard standing than you. Everything you say is completely true and objective.

Yeah, someone like you is highly credible.

I guess some of you never heard the phrase, “the ends don’t justify the means”?

From an elementalist’s perspective, I’d like to see the following:

Combinations with 4 stats that include vitality, healing power, and toughness:

1. Power [primary], Vitality, Healing Power, Toughness [minors]
2. Condition Damage [primary], Vitality, Healing Power, Toughness [minors]

Combinations that balance 5 stats equally:

1. Boon Duration, Healing Power, Vitality, Toughness, Power
2. Condition Duration, Condition Damage, Vitality, Toughness, Precision
3. Vitality, Toughness, Ferocity, Precision, Power

I’d like to hear some comment / justification for the rank rescaling and removal of jewels from amulets. Many of us have expressed our reasons for opposing these changes. Something to address those concerns would be appreciated.

So yeah… ESO is looking mighty good right about now.

Iason Evan.3806:

We knew this was coming and that coupled with ArenaNet’s propensity for iteration and the game always shifting, this can’t come as a surprise (or shouldn’t at least) to you.

It’s not that we didn’t know it was coming. It’s that the rescaling is too large. It erases too many distinctions that we’ve come to recognize, understand, and even respect. A lot of us above rank 50 were anticipating something far less drastic; e.g., making it easier to rank up between 60 > 80; or making rank 70+ the new rank 80.

Giving everyone in their mid 50’s dragon and removing any further progression is just not healthy for the game; it’s not healthy for dedicated players or casual players.

I know a lot of you want to argue we’ll get better progression from leaderboards and rank up chests, but think it through. The tpvp leaderboards aren’t the best indicator of skill or performance. A lot of our success is determined by an imperfect matchmaking system, the teams we group with, the hours we decide to play, whether we’re using ts or not, what build we feel like playing, and so on. And let’s not forget the fact the leaderboards will be reset by the leagues and ladders system, and every few months thereafter; erasing even more of our intangible “progress.” That leaves those of us who want to pvp with essentially pve rewards (rank up chests + achievement tracks).

I’ll admit the rank up system wasn’t perfect, but it was something unique to pvp that gave us a nice long-term goal to work towards. Now, we’ll have nothing really.

This is QQ worthy imo and not nearly enough people are kittened off about it.

All they really needed to do in my opinion was rescale the ranks from 68-80. That’s where the rank points spike up from 150,000 to 450,000-750,000 per level. To many, getting to rank 70 was attainable with enough effort and dedication. It was the rank requirements from 68-80 that were unreasonable for the vast majority.

Something like 175,000-200,000 points per level after rank 68 would be much more in line with the expectations of players. This way you make dragon a realistic long-term goal for the competitive casual, but leave it difficult enough for the hardcore crowd. There’s no reason you can’t and shouldn’t satisfy both groups.

All anet needs to do to fit this into their current plans is to change the rank-up chest to an achievement track reward that kicks in every 20,000 rank points.

How to crush the ambitions and pride of anyone who ever took GW2 pvp seriously.

Coming to you soon from Arenanet.

I honestly couldn’t be happier with my armor selections. This is how my ele looks in zodiac armor, with tier 3 cultural shoulders, gloves, and boots, and helm unselected.

For me personally, the light female zodiac skin is the best armor they’ve come up with since release. I love almost everything about it: the eerie blue haze covering the skin, the accentuated cleavage, intricate armor plating, and symmetry of each part. My only dislike, which is minor, is the coat tail effect on the leggings. Otherwise, I think the artists over at arenanet have outdone themselves.

I have one problem with the sigils rework. It benefits dual-wielding classes (e.g., warriors, rangers, guardians) more than single-wielding classes (i.e., elementalist and engineer). This isn’t an issue currently because on crit and on swap sigils have shared internal cool-downs.

For example, you receive no benefit for using sigil of energy and sigil of battle on two separate weapon sets. Since both share their effects on a 9 second internal cool-down, you can’t obtain more than 1 sigil proc every 9 seconds.

However, with the proposed changes you will indeed be able to proc two sigil effects on a single weapon set, and up to 4 on two separate weapon sets. Dual-wielders will therefore benefit from twice as many potential effects as single-wielders.

I’m unconvinced the devs have fully considered how this sigil rework will place single-wielding professions at a disadvantage. I think it’ll be overlooked and that the problem will go unaddressed for 3 months or more. For this reason, let me propose a simple solution immediately: Double the number of sigil slots for single wielding professions. An elementalist’s staff should slot 4 unique sigils; an engineer’s pistol should slot 2 unique sigils; and so on.

Tired… of this kitten.

You don’t need to remove Skyhammer to satisfy most players. A better solution is simply to redesign some of its more aggravating and non-competitive mechanics. For example:

1. Continue adding guardrails and reducing breakable panels.
2. Remove the respawn timer for deaths resulting from knock-offs.
3. Halve the damage from canon blasts (or make them dodgeable).
4. Create an objective where we can obtain stability for a brief time.

This would at least retain map diversity, while addressing the concerns of most players.

Yup, lots of us getting lagged out and d/c’d in TotSS (tPvP).

Let me start out by agreeing that Pin Down is too strong.

What I’m unclear about is why the devs felt it necessary to triple its cast time and add an obvious cast animation. This is a significant change considering how Skull Crack was only nerfed from .25 to .5 seconds, or how Healing Signet is only being reduced by 8% healing effectiveness. The heavy handedness of this change doesn’t seem in line with other warrior nerfs and I’d love to hear a justification for it.

Alternatively, couldn’t the potency of the skill be toned down instead? e.g., retain the .25 cast time but reduce the immobilize and bleeding durations from 3 to 2 seconds and 12 to 8 seconds, respectively. Or, increase the cast time and animation from .25 to .5 and reduce the bleeding duration from 12 to 8 seconds. All I’m saying is that there are other less extreme possibilities to consider.

Thoughts?

I totally support a system of unlocks, but in pvp strictly (i.e., no grinding in pve). Ideally, this would serve as compensation for how they gutted the gear unlocks in the old rank system. While unique armors and weapons aren’t much to ride home about, they were at least something we could be slightly proud of; they were something that gave us a sense of progression. As it is now, there’s nothing to distinguish pvp veterans from newer players. Nothing that makes us feel like we’ve accomplished anything.

Let me ask you, does that sound fair?

If you’re content with some lame rank finisher and a meaningless number next to your name, wonderful. Personally, I think our time in pvp is worth more than this. Personally… I want progression to mean something. If that means we get to unlock new stat combinations, skills, and gear purely within pvp, I’m all for it. That’s considerably better than what we had before. And if you think that’s unfair to new players, then I say you’re being a hypocrite. Why should pvp be on a perfectly even playing field when there is so much gear inequality in pve and wvw? I don’t hear anyone complaining about that.

Sure, it’s kitten’ing awesome when you’re new to the game. And you get everything the top ranked players get. Almost like you got your legendary and all your ascended gear the moment you installed. But how much fun would that be? You won’t be a newbie forever. Eventually, you’ll want something to show for your time. You’ll want to distinguish yourself. Brag, whatever. You can’t do that if there’s absolutely nothing to strive for. But unfortunately, that’s exactly where we are now. The devs have nothing left to reward us with besides these minor customizations to our characters.

Complain and rage all you want, but this is a brilliant idea and a great addition to pvp.

On the topic of Arcane traits and utilities, I’d love to see Arcane Retribution proc’ing on stuns or auras. I’d also be content with refreshing Arcane Power at 50-75% health.

In my opinion, arcane skills should work similarly to mesmer mantras; e.g., you channel Arcane Power for 2 3/4 seconds to yield 5 unique charges, each with a 100% critical chance on your next attack. Alternatively, it could be redesigned with 2 charges of 2-3 attacks, which could be more useful for stacking conditions with Elemental Surge.

Similarly, Arcane Wave, Blast, and Brilliance would receive two charges. In return, their effective damage and/or healing would be halved. This again would enhance the utility of Elemental Surge, since it would proc its conditions more regularly.

An Arcane version of Harmonious Mantras could then be worked into the grandmaster tier, producing 3 charges instead of 2. At the same time, Elemental Surge would be moved down to master tier (replacing Arcane Energy).

I’ve been playing a dagger/dagger diamond skin condi ele in tpvp (0/0/30/20/20 w/ settler’s, i.e., 3,200 armor and 600 hp passive regen per second).

I just thought I’d pop in and say I find this thread highly amusing….

Very nice and detailed post (mostly reasonable, unlike the Bear Document!)

Regarding your elementalist proposal, I agree with some of your changes (i.e., Dragon’s Tooth, Comet, Gale, Signet of Restoration, Ether Renewal, Ride the Lightning, and Arcane Brilliance). Personally, I would not trade a stun-breaker for a longer cool-down on Lightning Flash. Fire Shield also seems too mild.

Now, I disagree with your changes to Lightning Strike and Diamond Skin.

Let’s focus on Lightning Strike for the moment. There are a lot of instant-cast skills in the game (not counting stun-breakers). Why would you want to weaken this skill in particular, when you state you want to “help” the elementalist? I assume it’s because you think offensive effects with zero activation time are too powerful, provide no counter-play, etc. If that’s the case, shouldn’t you also want to normalize the elementalist’s Magnetic Wave, Arcane Blast, Arcane Wave, Arcane Power, Cleansing Fire, Lightning Flash, Sunspot, Electric Discharge, and Earthen Blast? Not to mention all other similar profession-specific mechanics, along with all passive ai, trait, rune, and sigil procs. I would not be in favor of any of this.

In other words, it seems you want to play an entirely different game, where every move is clearly telegraphed to provide an opportunity for a counter-move. But GW2 isn’t an entirely different game; it isn’t chess. As I see it, the tempo of GW2 combat is far too dynamic to be micro-managed in anything remotely like this. Adding a mere 0.25 second delay to the use of a single skill is never going to give you the reaction time you think you need to perfectly outplay your opponent. Instants and passives, whatever you want to call them, are here to stay because they simplify an already complicated game.

As for so-called hard-counters or immunities (Diamond Skin, Berserker’s Stance, Automated Response, et al.), I don’t get where all the hate is coming from. Each of these traits/skills is counter-balanced by clearly defined parameters, situational effectiveness, and a non-negligible amount of risk and/or sacrifice.

To speak only of Diamond Skin, let’s remind ourselves how it’s only effective against conditions when above 90% health. For a tanky elementalist running Soldier’s (0/0/30/20/20), that’s a mere 1,900 points of direct damage to bring them below the threshold. This is why it’s situational. While it might appear overpowered, it only appears this way in a minority of cases where you have a 1v1 encounter against a pure condition build. In the vast majority of cases, however, the Diamond Skin is easily shattered within a few strikes and rendered completely useless by even one player running power/hybrid. The investment for this highly situational trait is not small either, as it forces some very undesirable trait distributions for the elementalist.

Similar to blocks, physical damage immunities, and true invulnerabilities, condition immunities serve a purpose. And that purpose is to provide us with a unique form of attrition, sustain, survivability, etc. The moment you begin multiplying the force of a single player against another, it should be obvious why there needs to be a way to reduce all damage and/or condition spam to zero, even if this is only for a brief enough time to provide a means of escape.

Overall, you have to take the current condition heavy meta and the general weaknesses of the elementalist into account. And in that context, I find Diamond Skin is an impeccably well-designed trait. The only improvement I’d make is to tie the immunity treshold to the player’s armor rating (i.e., 85% max at 3,000 armor).

Some things to know about me: I’m currently rank 52. I’ve played over 2,000 matches of solo q and tpvp. I’ve been in the top 150 (briefly) on both leaderboards.

I main ele (scepter / focus roamer and staff team-fighter), but have a decent amount of experience playing warrior (longbow + mace / sword home defender, roamer, far point assaulter), guardian (staff + mace / focus mid bunker), engi (rifle far point assaulter / decapper / bunker) and mesmer (greatsword + sword / focus trebber).

Basically, I want to step up my game. Some things I’m looking for in my teammates: 1) dedication to the game, 2) readiness to practice and improve , 3) solid knowledge of team composition, strategy, and roles; and 4) lots of experience with tpvp.

I have a reasonably flexible schedule. Let me know what you can offer.

Didn’t even realize this problem existed and I’m rank 51. With all the tournament games I’ve played, I should be marauder by now… So much for avoiding hotjoin, huh. Please fix this and make sure to do a rollback to restore our lost rank points.

Of course, they meant the reward at the end of your match (the one that pops up on the right of your screen). Not to be confused with those useless tournament chests that you’ve been hoarding in some desperate hope of finally being rewarded for all those months of having absolutely no gold or valuable items to show for your time.

Those chests… cough will give you luck essences… you’ll have to wait till Tuesday for this awesome reward… or “you could hold on to them forever.” (Hugh Norfolk)

Just lost myself and my team their match due to a server-side network connection error in solo q. There are no problems with my internet connection; the entire time I have been able to access the internet; and nothing has changed with my router.

The message I got was the following: “Network error. The inability to connect to Guild Wars 2 may be caused by internet routing issues or a server side network failure. If the problem persists, please visit our support website. (Code=5:11:3:159:101).”

All of us have lost standing due to something entirely out of my control. I want to know what Arenanet is doing to take responsibility in events like this. Would I be asking too much that a support ticket be provided followed by a rollback?

Just lost myself and my team their match due to a server-side network connection error in solo q. There are no problems with my internet connection; the entire time I have been able to access the internet; and nothing has changed with my router.

The message I got was the following: “Network error. The inability to connect to Guild Wars 2 may be caused by internet routing issues or a server side network failure. If the problem persists, please visit our support website. (Code=5:11:3:159:101).”

All of us have lost standing due to something entirely out of my control. I want to know what Arenanet is doing to take responsibility in events like this. Would I be asking too much that a support ticket be provided followed by a rollback?

John Corpening.9847:

If not, what would you do to improve rank acquisition?

I think the rate of rank acquisition should be accelerated. It took me 7 months of semi-hardcore play to reach rank 51 (564,000 points). To reach the coveted dragon rank I would need nearly 9,000,000 points (and as high as 15,000,000 to attain the Legendary Champion title). If I maintain my rather unhealthy rate of play, it would take a total of 9.5 years (I assume we’d be well into GW3 by that point)… Neither hardcore nor casual players have any hope of achieving this absurd goal. Therefore, my thought is to keep the ranking system, but to rapidly increase the amount of rank points awarded.

For example, I would favor the following formula:

• Hotjoin: win = 800 points / loss = 300 points.
• Solo Queue: win = 1,600 points / loss = 600 points.
• Team Queue: win = 2,000 points / loss = 900 points.

At the same time, I think top stats should have their values increased: say, from 5 to 50 points per top stat.

If a scheme of this nature were ever implemented, it would be nice to see a rollback for a player’s previous accomplishments (it simply wouldn’t fair to older players). For example, you could take the top stats for all players and multiply it by a factor of 10, adjusting their ranks accordingly. Rolling back a player’s hotjoin, solo queue and tournament wins shouldn’t be much harder to execute, as these numbers are already in your database. So, if a player has 1,000 team arena wins, they’d at least be compensated in light of the new system. Likewise, with hotjoin and solo queue.

In my opinion, this is one reasonable course of action to improve the current rank system. You can’t simply erase all the time and effort invested by the current pvp population, but you also can’t leave it as it is given how absymally slow it is to move from one rank to the next. Overall, I don’t know the exact numbers needed to accomplish the best solution. I just think it should be possible for casuals and hardcore players to achieve their long-term goals. In the end, it shouldn’t take more than 2.5 years to achieve the highest possible rank for a hardcore player, and no more than 5 years for a casual player.

I can’t tolerate how you all use skyhammer as an excuse to remove the rank system. You don’t know the hard numbers behind who exploited it and to what extent.

From what I’ve seen, there were at most 1-2 active skyhammer farms at any given time, of which most players were oblivious. This means the amount of active abusers could only be a fraction of the actual player base.

These servers were only active for a few short months before Arenanet patched it (and it was patched, since glory and rank points are now only awarded at match end). Once again, this means the exploit was cut short long before it became a rampant problem.

I also doubt the players who did know about skyhammer were wasting much time on it since it’s clearly an exploit and incredibly boring to farm it.

Only arenanet knows the exact numbers behind the exploit, and they never shared that information with us. In all likelihood, the abusers are a fraction of a minority. So what if some players cheated to get where they are? That doesn’t render the efforts of the vast majority illegitimate.

This whole skyhammer thing has been blown way out of proportion and I’m sick of hearing about it. In my opinion, these complaints are likely coming from a vocal minority of WvW’ers/casuals who want pvp rewards/finishers, but who don’t have the patience to earn their rank. These are the players who have the least invested in the current system, so of course they don’t care about rank, and will make any excuse to get rid of it.

I’m concerned about the direction of pvp rewards. Currently, there is an established system for recognizing pvp accomplishments: i.e., rank is tied to pvp titles and armor.

Removing the distinction between pve and pvp accessories will radically devalue the achievements of the current pvp community (who, I will add, have been without any tangible rewards for over a year). Leaving us with a deprecated rank title and finisher as compensation for this change is disturbing and deeply insensitive to the immense effort and dedication expended by the existing pvp population.

Along these lines, the addition of gold to match wins rather than match win reward chests is another slap in the face. Many of us have been anticipating major changes to the reward system and have been saving our glory and match win chests accordingly. The way the blog post is worded, I’m made to believe that gold will be part of match wins only (awarded with rank and glory at the end of the match), rather than being contained in the chest itself. This again, devalues our previous accomplishments.

If ranks and the armor skins associated with those rank are being eliminated, while no gold or other items will be awarded for tournament chests, doesn’t this mean that all pvp’ers have done up to this point is utterly worthless?

What good are rank points if you refuse to recognize rankings under the new system?

What good is glory if it cannot be used to attain rank appropriate armor?

What good are tournament chests if they contain no valuable currency or items?

I believe…

• Gold should be awarded inside tournament chests, not at the end of a match win.
• The rank system with rank appropriate armor should be maintained. Rank means a lot more in pvp than levels do in pve. The distinction should stay.
• PvP accessories should work in only 1 direction: from pvp to pve, not from pve to pvp. It takes far more time and effort to obtain pvp skins. Consider Flame Legion armor in pvp… This took me 7 months (to reach rank 50). In pve it would only take a few days farming dungeon tokens. You cannot equate the two. Skins mean something very different in pvp than in pve.

1. They’re adding gold (i.e., probably a few silver) to match wins, not match win reward chests… So essentially, all our efforts in pvp, if we were dumb enough to save chests (sitting on 700 tournament chests myself), are worthless…

2. They’re removing rank…. leaving us with deprecated rank titles and finishers… Is that what I’ve been playing for? So, the only reward I could take any pride in (reaching rank 51 legitimately/without farming over a period of 7 months) is worthless…

3. They’re eliminating the distinction between pvp and pve accessories… So, spending months to attain a privileged armor set in pvp can be attained by a few days farming in a pve dungeon. Now, someone with no pvp experience will have the same privilege as someone who spent hundreds (if not thousands) of hours mastering pvp.

Is this how arenanet intends to reward its players? Speaking personally, I find these changes unforgivable, and will likely stop playing this game entirely.

Diamond skin will be an incredibly hard trait to build around and play with effectively. Not sure why this isn’t obvious to some of you.

Ignoring the whole skyhammer fiasco, I still think rank is a better indicator of skill. MMR doesn’t quite measure your performance as a player, only the performance of your team relative to another team. It doesn’t include your previous experience (rank), or individual contributions during a match.

You could be the most awesome player, and still have horrible MMR (and vice versa), simply because you got a larger share of 4v5’s, newbies, and bad team comps. Players can and are quickly locked into the same MMR range as new players, which attracts even more inexperience players to your team. And the cycle continues. In the end, once your MMR hits a certain range there’s little you can do to claw your way out.

From what I’ve seen, the Glicko 2 rating system was designed for chess, go, and other 1v1 games, not team oriented games with fluctuating players. I don’t know about you, but I want my score to reflect my actual experience and performance (stomps, points captured/defended, top scores, etc.), not the average performance of a bunch of people I’m randomly grouped with.

• Remove MMR adjustments for losing a 3-4v5 (players should not be penalized if one or more of their teammates is absent for the majority of the match).
• Make alterations to the select team and change team functions in hotjoin (it should not be possible for players to create lopsided matches; e.g., use shuffling)
• Balance condition damage relative to power/precision/crit damage (a single stat should not be on par with a 3 stat investment)
• Add gold and/or gems to match win reward chests (it should be possible to obtain custom arena kits/tokens and various other gw2 goods strictly through pvp).
• Introduce a 1v1, 2v2, and 3v3 gauntlet-style dueling arena (with a spectator mode) inside the Heart of the Mists (it should be possible for players to experiment and fight each other outside conquest and custom arenas).
• Introduce events and event tokens to the Heart of the Mists (player’s should given the ability create fun and challenging activities of their own; e.g., games of skill).
• Redesign the Heart of the Mists and make it multi-server (currently, the Mists on most servers is a dull and underpopulated place; it should be reworked).
• Increase the cadence of pvp content/balance patches (not enough resources are invested in the pvp community; 3 months or more is unacceptably slow).
• Introduce new pvp maps with interesting environmental mechanics (for example, the theme for one map could be styled after a jumping puzzle, where the secondary objective would involve a way of obtaining a team-wide stability buff).

I wholeheartedly support The Lost Witch’s proposal. You need to factor in the durations of each stack in this change. Supposing stacks are limited to 2, why should one player be able to use two 3 second stacks to get 6 seconds of immobilize, while another player using 3 stacks of 1 second, can only get 2 seconds.

Why would you reduce the maximum amount of stacks rather than the maximum amount of duration? For example, elementalists can use elemental surge and arcane power for a maximum of 5 stacks, at 1 second per stack. A 5 second immobilize for investing in a grandmaster and a utility skill is not imbalanced at all. I think this change is completely unjustified.

Why would arenanet release the pvp legendaries before the full reward system has been introduced? I’ve been saving all my rank and match win rewards chests in the hopes that these will actually be worth something in the new system. And yet, to get a legendary I’ll be forced to use a substantial amount of these items. That means I’ll lose out on any potential future improvements to pvp rewards…

Anet can’t release pvp legendaries without telling us their plans for the new system. If glory and rank/match win chests are to continue to be utterly worthless, then I can see why I should go for the legendary now rather than later. But if that’s the case, none of our work/savings over the past months are going to be rewarded retroactively. How arenanet could do this to their loyal pvp playerbase, I cannot fathom.

However, if indeed there are going to be improvements, then it’ll simply be a waste to go after the legendary when they release them. And if that’s the case, why give us the legendaries before reworking the entire system? This is an unnecessary temptation that will force us to sink everything we’ve earned up to this point for nothing more than a cosmetic skin. This is an unjustifiable mistake, however you look at it.

Arenanet please:

1. Release details about the pvp reward system before you release pvp legendaries.
2. Do not disrespect the pvp community by introducing a completely new system that will disregard all pre-existing pvp currencies/materials/chests.
3. Do not release pvp legendaries until the new pvp reward system is complete.

Hope the drop rate for these shards is much higher in the match win reward chests and the upper level rank reward chests. Would not be right that a rank 10-20 hotjoin player can get the same chance of obtaining a legendary as a rank 50-60 tourney player.

This is the frost bow build I’ve been running in solo q and tpvp for the past 4-5 months. It’s a single focus cc/dps spec that can successfully 1v1 any class (that is, if you play skillfully and have the timing down). The main idea is to chain cc to set-up deep freeze and ice storm, while simultaneously mitigating damage/interruption to this rotation.

Specifics:

Weapon set/sigils: scepter (battle) + focus (accuracy)
Amulet/runes #1: zerker (valk jewel) + runes of the scholar x 6
Amulet/runes #2: soldier (zerk jewel) + runes of rata sum x 6
Utilities: ether renewal, arcane power, arcane shield, frost bow, fiery greatsword
Traits: 0/30 (iv, ix, xii)/0/10 (iv)/30 (i, v, xii)

Notes on rotation:

The build is a bit technical, so I’ll elaborate. Generally, I open with the arcane shield to prevent interruptions against my main skill rotation. I begin in water and cast freezing gust > comet, followed by the air attune > blinding flash > lightning strike > gale (if my opponent is without stability/cc immunity).

Once they’re knockdown, I move to fire and cast flamewall directly on the character (moving within the fire field to build might stacks), and then cast phoenix > dragon’s tooth. Immediately after starting the dragon’s tooth (before it’s channel is complete), I switch to earth and cast arcane power > magnetic wave > obsidian flesh.

Due to elemental surge + arcane power, the flamewall is effectively turned into an immobilize field the moment I enter the earth attune. This combination of flamewall + magnetic wave yields 5 seconds of immobilize. I’ll also be invulnerable for 4 seconds thanks to obsidian flesh. In these conditions, it will be very difficult to evade my ice bow chain because a) immobilize is being reapplied in a pulse that renders condition cleanse and dodging more or less ineffective; and b) the ice bow attacks cannot be interrupted/blinded while invulnerable.

This allows me to have a very high success rate in landing the deep freeze (#5) attack, which will lock down my target for another 5 seconds. At this point, I cast ice storm and immediately swap to water: because of piercing shards I get +20% damage to vulnerable foes (guaranteed by air 25: weak spot). The chances of surviving the full impact of ice storm is pretty low, as it gives upwards of 22-25k damage in zerker gear.

If they aren’t dead by this point, I’ll hit them with frost fan at point blank range, drop the ice bow and immediately attune to air for a double lightning strike.

That’s just one example of a rotation that is very effective, but there are many others….

Symbolic 1
Sol 0

Moving on…

As someone who suffered through all the lopsided matchmaking in solo q and tpvp, I’m extremely happy to hear this news.

Well done Arenanet. Well done…

I noticed some changes were made to weapon sets in other professions. I was under the impression the Dec.10th update would focus on balancing trait lines only. Why was the elementalist left out of this discussion? We’ve proposed many times that our weapon skills be revised (e.g., focus).

Clearly, it’s too late to suggest major changes in skill functionality, but perhaps we can argue for some simple last minute adjustments.

As a long time x/focus elementalist, I genuinely recommend the following:

FOCUS

1. Fire shield: reduce CD to 25 seconds to match shocking aura; and/or increase the might duration from each hit to 20 seconds instead of 10.

2. Freezing gust: as supericeman suggested in another thread, replace the 3 second chill with a 1-2 second freeze; or reduce its CD to 20 seconds; or increase chill duration.

3. Comet: this skill needs to have its velocity increased (currently, it’s far too slow and easily predicted for the mild 2 second daze it produces).

4. Gale: reduce the CD to 35-40 seconds; and/or make it unblockable; and/or increase the knockdown duration from 2 to 3 seconds. Something needs to be done with this skill (and quickly). A 50 second CD for an easily telegraphed attack that only produces a 2 second knockdown with no damage whatsoever is weak.

Those are my own last minute hopes for dec 10th. What’s your last minute wish list? Remember to keep this as clear, realistic, and concise as possible.

Well, I’ve been playing all night (30+ games) and the matches have been reasonably random; there’s been a mix of low and high level players on both teams. However, just now I came out of a game where the other team was composed of all top ranked players (recognizable pvp guild names too, such as VvV); every one of them was above rank 50. It’s clear to me that they knew each other and were syncing together to create deeply uneven matches in solo q. Players like this understand how MMR matchmaking works and have been abusing it to get higher on the leaderboards. Something needs to be done about these players… They have no sense of honor or sportsmanship.

Justin ODell.9517:

Aereniel.7356:

Concurrent to rolling out the MMR fixes, please do a reset of the soloQ leaderboards.

This would require resetting everyone’s MMR, which is something we could do, but I’m not sure is something we’d want to do.

Could you guys give us the option of resetting our personal MMR? A lot of players were on the receiving end of imbalanced match-ups. Shouldn’t they have the opportunity to rebuild their damaged MMR if they choose?

I propose the following:

Adept:
1) Arcane Mastery: Reduce ICD of Final Shielding (60) and Arcane Retribution (36).
2) Blasting Staff, 3) Vigorous Scepter, 4) Windborne Dagger: All weapon skills in the arcana trait line should be at the same tier.
5) Arcane Resurrection: No change.
6) Renewing Stamina: No change.

Master:
7) Elemental Attunement: No change.
8) Arcane Retribution: I think this is worthy of master status if the CD is reduced (as has been proposed), and if Arcane Mastery has synergy with this trait/Final Shielding. One interesting effect of this change is that it will make Elemental Surge more viable, thus giving elementalists a solid alternative to Evasive Arcana.
9) Final Shielding: Same reasoning as above. Also, increase threshold to 50%.
10) Arcane Energy: I’ve honestly tried to make this trait work in a variety of different builds, and to no avail. I think it would be far more effective, and far more deserving of master status if it restored 50% endurance rather than the meager 25% currently.

With this scheme, a number of synergistic trait alternatives are possible, such as 1) Renewing Stamina, Elemental Attunement, Evasive Arcana; or 2) Arcane Mastery, Arcane Retribution, Elemental Surge. With this scheme we wouldn’t feel forced to go 20-30 points deep into arcana, as there would be viable traits at each tier.

Concerning Diamond Skin, I think the threshold should be reduced to 85%. This is a grandmaster, it should be powerful enough to define an entirely new build (much like Fresh Air has done). Weakening it by reducing condition duration, or by maintaining an overly cautious threshold, will remove any incentive to use it. Elementalists deserve a powerful defensive trait. It’s entirely appropriate that it should be in our earth trait line.

I support all these changes to the elementalist. In particular, I think Burning Fire and Diamond Skin (in their proposed form…) will provide just enough incentive to sway us away from water and arcana, and should go some ways in creating solid build diversity. In my opinion, this is fair compensation for moving our most valued adept arcana and water traits up to master tier. Overall, I believe these are healthy and balanced changes for eles and the current state of pvp.

Cries Of Sorrow.5864:

Quinti.5204:

Side-note: Just vs’d a Thief in wvw. 1v1. I went looking for one, we played a while and I noticed that the Thief had a shiet ton of Teleportation/Shadowstep, w/e you peeps call it.

I was just a normal bunker Ele (d/d – 3 cantrip build) with pvt looking to play 1v1… the battle lasted a while, but I couldn’t kill the thief. I’d get him to low hp, then he’d just reset. I mean QTF is this?!?

Thieves have tons of Teleport/Shadowstep/QTFstep~~~

Conclusion, you’re just mad that you couldn’t pin him down and finish him off, instead of coming up with a plan to trap and kill him you came to this terrible thread to feed it’s walls. Clap clap

What have you contributed to these forums? Besides arrogant commentary?

This change will be exploited, it’s obvious. Because you can select you team before the match even begins, or switch teams as the match is in progress, winning players will all coordinate to be on the same team, i.e., they will look at who played best and choose their team based on that; this happens frequently already in hotjoin. They’ll also be able to switch in the middle of a game to go over to the winning team, and so on. This will encourage massive exploitation and unfairness as the system is set-up atm.

Just hearing this, it sounds like a horrible change. No personal rank/glory? Excuse me? It’s obvious this change was put in to punish players who were farming rank and glory, but that was an irrelevant minority of the player base. Congratulations, now you’re punishing everyone else who had nothing to do with that stupidity!

One of the few indicators of my own improvement in pvp has come from increasing personal rank and glory in individual matches. It’s what provided me with a sense of how each player did relative to each other. I honestly do not understand the logic of this change. Why is everything kitten team oriented in this game? Arenanet, you’re erasing the individual out of your game. I won’t stand for that as a player. I am not a mindless cog in some zerg. Recognize and represent our individual accomplishments!

Compare this now to a thief who spams blind. What do I mean by spam? What I mean is that they have near permanent blind uptime during their active play, i.e., when they are unstealthed. How do they accomplish this? It’s pretty clear:

1. By carefully balancing their initiative to repeatedly use Black Powder ( a smoke field that pulses blind every 1 second for 4 seconds)
2. By activating utility skills like Smoke Screen (a smoke field that pulses blind every 1 second for 7 seconds), or blinding powder (an instantaneous blind + stealth).
3. By using smoke fields with projectiles and whirl finishers.
4. By using dark fields with blast and leap finishers.
5. By depending on passive traits that apply blind on stealth (Cloaked in Shadows), on strikes inflicting more than 10% of their health (Instinctual Response), and on 25% of their health (Last Refuge).
6. By using any number of single blinds: i.e., Infiltrator’s Arrow, Shadow Shot, Ink Shot, Signet of Shadows, Blinding Tuft, Tactical Strike.

As soon as you introduce the stealth mechanic into this picture you will understand how they can maintain near permanent blind uptime during their active play. Many of their skills have no true cool down, since they use up initiative instead. In practice, this means they can blow out a series of single and pulse blinds in rapid succession (usually 1 blind/second), and then fall back immediately into stealth to regenerate initiative (and wait out their utility cool downs).

This is nothing like what the elementalist can do. The thief’s ability to blind is highly effective because it can be repeatedly applied within a very short period (1 second), and because they have a mechanic to escape exposure when those blinds run out. The point here is that the elementalist cannot apply blinds rapidly enough to significantly impact their survival, they cannot spam blind, nor can they limit their exposure as those blinds go on cool down. This is an unreliable mechanic to keep ourselves alive. Thus, it is neither powerful nor useful.

In fact, I’d be happy if they removed all our blinds if that meant we would get a rapid means of moving from point a to point b; if it meant we had true teleportation. This, and not some gimmicky blind mechanic, is what would impact our survivability. It’s what the elementalist NEEDS from a game balancing perspective, and also what the elementalist DESERVES given the nature of the profession in the world of MMORPG’s. In my opinion, denying teleportation to the only real mage/wizard archetype of gw2 is just as bad as removing heavy armor from a warrior, or giving stealth to a guardian. It’s changes like this that contradict the core mechanics of these professions, and hurt the game as a whole.

ThiBash.5634:

How seriously do you want to be taken by your readers if you purposefully feed us false information? The only one of the 3 that the ele doesn’t have is stealth. They can teleport and they can spam blinds.

I said…

Gesamtkunstwerk.6590:

Does anyone else find it unreasonable that thieves were given not just one or two but three powerful abilities to disengage, while elementalists were given a total of zero? I’m speaking, of course, of the thief’s ability to stealth, spam blind, and teleport, and the elementalist’s complete lack of any useful evasive abilities.

They key words here are powerful and useful. Yes, we have 1 ability to teleport, and a number of ways to blind our enemies. However, this is a shallow interpretation of our disengage mechanics.

First of all, Lightning Flash has a number of features that make it unviable for the purpose of escape: a) the distance traveled is too short, 900 range, b) its cool down is too long, 40 seconds, c) it’s not a stun breaker, and d) it does damage, making it more of an offensive utility. Having just 1 of these tools at our disposal is neither powerful nor useful in terms of our survivability.

Regarding blind, I said spam blind not that we couldn’t blind at all. For illustration, imagine an elementalist wants to make a build that uses blind to its highest potential. For this, we would use scepter main hand + Signet of Air + Glyph of Storms + Evasive Arcana + Tornado. What we get is Blinding Flash (1 blind/10 sec), Dust Devil (1 blind/15 sec), Signet of Air (1 blind/30 sec), Glyph of Storms (4 blinds/60 sec), Evasive Arcana (1 blind/9 sec), and Tornado (5 blinds/150 sec). In theory, this gives us an average of 1 blind every 2.6 seconds. However, there are a number of limiting factors.

1. We need to be in the correct attunement at the correct time to execute Blinding Flash and Dust Devil at their optimal rates.
2. The radius of Evasive Arcana is a mere 180. We would literally have to dodge roll into our opponent every 9 seconds in the air attunement. If you have any experience with the elementalist, you should see how impractical this really is.
3. The blind ratio of Tornado is negative, since we need to cease all our other skills for 15 seconds.
4. All of our blinds are active and situational. We don’t get reactive traits that passively blind foes. Unlike thieves, we have to anticipate our opponent’s attacks in order to blind them effectively.
5. Most importantly, the majority of our blind skills (besides Glyph of Storms; and perhaps Elemental Surge) are single (not pulse) blinds. What this means is that we cannot evade multiple strike attacks such as the warrior’s 100 Blades, the ranger’s Rapid Fire/Barrage, the mesmer’s Spatial Surge, and so on. Moreover, the pulse blinds we do possess are spaced out at 3 seconds + are on a very long CD (60 and 150)

So, in truth our blind ratio is quite low… I’d estimate it at around 1 blind/5-6 seconds. And this is in a build specifically designed for getting the highest number of blinds.

Why weren’t these skills, so abundant to the thief (and to a lesser extent, the mesmer), given to the elementalist? It’s nonsensical. What do masters of stealth and acrobatics, or experts of deception and illusion, have to do with magical portals? Conceptually, it’s easy to imagine how an ele performs these feats; e.g., they transform into bolts of lightning, meld with the earth, open dimensional floors with their arcane knowledge, and so on. The difference should be clear. The elementalist/wizard utilizes real magic to evade others and move around; the thief and mesmer rely on trickery and confusion.

Now, you could argue that the developers had something completely unique in mind for the elementalist; that it’s less of a traditional spell-caster, and more like a mage with combat training. If that’s the case, why is the elementalist a light armor class with the lowest health and vitality in the game? Moreover, why was the elementalist singled out for these special creative liberties, while all the other fantasy archetypes were left untouched?: i.e., the warrior, guardian, thief (minus teleportation), necromancer, and ranger are more or less consistent with lore, literature, and the history of MMORPG’s. (I’m leaving out the engineer and mesmer as those have been fairly unique to gw2).

My thought is that a creative risk was taken in redesigning the wizard as a battle mage. In doing so, the developers stripped the spell-caster of his beloved teleportation and gave it the thief and mesmer. As compensation, they made the elementalist into a versatile melee spell-casting hybrid; recall the overpowered d/d elementalist. As it turned out, however, this design concept was too strong, and the elementalist has since been forced back into its more familiar role as a glassy ranged magic user. The difference now is that it has none of the effectiveness of a melee class, and none of the survivability of a traditional wizard. This, to me, explains the current state of the elementalist. I hate to say it, but the profession is something of a mongrel; it has no unique function or role that couldn’t be fulfilled better by another class. The design is simply flawed.

For these reasons, I suggest one of two things. If elementalists are to be old school spell-casters, then they need to be given a viable mechanic for survivability (they deserve teleportation). If elementalist are to be melee spell-caster hybrids, as the devs presumably intended, then they need to be given the toughness, vitality, traits, and skills of a medium armor profession. In my opinion, the elementalist will never be fixed with minor skill updates or balance changes. You cannot tweak a design flaw. By the old gods and the new, let arenanet decide the fate of the elementalist and be done with.

Does anyone else find it unreasonable that thieves were given not just one or two but three powerful abilities to disengage, while elementalists were given a total of zero? I’m speaking, of course, of the thief’s ability to stealth, spam blind, and teleport, and the elementalist’s complete lack of any useful evasive abilities.

In my opinion, this represents a serious error in the way these class mechanics were designed. According to arenanet’s own description, thieves are “experts at stealth and surprise,” they “move through the shadows,” and can be “very hard to hit” due to their “acrobatic fighting style.” The elementalists, in contrast, are meant to be “multi-faceted spellcasters that channel elemental forces” to “do their bidding.”

Conceptually, it makes sense that thieves have a great facility with stealth, blind, and other evasive tactics. What doesn’t make sense is for them to have TELEPORTATION on top of everything else. What do I mean by teleportation? Well, it looks something like the following: Infiltrator’s Arrow; Infiltrator’s Strike; Shadow Shot; Shadow Strike; Smoke Trail; Shadowstep; Shadow Return; Infiltrator’s Signet; Shadow Trap; and Shadow Escape

Call it whatever you want, but this is teleportation (likewise, with the mesmer portal). Traditionally, teleportation was a unique spell-casting ability possessed only by mages, sorcerers, warlocks, and wizards. While their magic could be quite powerful, their lack of fighting experience also made them frail and vulnerable. In those respects, the wizard is practically identical to the elementalist. However, unlike the elementalist, the wizard could keep themselves alive by opening gateways and traveling great distances. Besides Lightning Flash, the elementalist/wizard of gw2 is devoid of all magical teleportation, and yet (s)he retains very little by way of survivability.