Guild Wars 2

Knote.2904:

I also disagree that Geyser doesn’t need a radius boost, I feel it definately does, for the same reason Necro Marks got a boost, you shouldn’t have to have that trait to make it decent. This would be more of a quality of life change than anything, being so small makes it a PITA to use. Same goes for #2 in Fire, even though I didn’t change it. Blasting Staff should just be a small bonus to these.

I don’t think having 10 sec cd base Attunements would be overpowered at all though, in fact Engineers don’t have ANY cooldowns swapping between kits/weapons, it doesn’t make ability cooldowns faster, it just gives you flexbility. Engy doesn’t get stuck in Toolkit for 5-10 seconds forced to use a melee auto.

Although having shorter cooldowns can affect the skills that proc effects when swapping, if necessary those effects could be nerfed slightly to balance them, like the Lightning Blast when swapping to Air, there shouldn’t even be such untelegraphed burst like that and Fresh Air anyway. =p

I did think of suggesting what you said though, making the cd 11-12 seconds then making Lingering Elements (15 point minor trait) reduce it by 2 seconds.

Also I really don’t think this would “kill” Arcana, the major traits are still extremely desirable, and attunement bonuses in my suggestion would be potent enough that the duration bonus and even bonus dmg for keeping them would be strong.

But yeah, as you said attunement cooldowns are too mandatory, being locked out of elements for 16 SECONDS, is unacceptable, and basically forces you to just blow all your long cooldowns as soon as your in an attunement because you won’t have it when you need it, and all this does is reinforce the spammy nature of this game which isn’t a good thing.

Again going back to Engineers, they can pop toolkit to use a pull or pry bar, pop back into weapon, then immediately go back to toolkit if they need their shield block, Elementalists don’t have that luxury, if you pop into Air to use your attacks/knockback then to Fire and need to go back because you need Lightning Field, you can’t, so you’re usually better off just “spamming” instead of intelligently saving cooldowns.

Yeah the more I think of it, the more I realise that we essentially use up all of that attunement’s spell cooldowns before switching to the next, because the cooldown is so long most of them will be back up anyway. And I know you didn’t suggest it, but I definitely do not think they should be as fast a recharge as kits, because the idea of attunements is still cooldown management and situational play. This would not be the case if there was no cooldown, and is too much of a problem with such a long 16s cd.
Yeah blasting staff needs to be less mandatory for staff users I guess, maybe increase the default size by 25% and make blasting staff give only 25% more like someone else suggested, or rework it altogether. For example it could give some sort of shorter activation time to spells like ice spike and eruption. When compared to necromancer marks, even without the increased radius trait, their AoE radius are much bigger than most of ours, and on top of that are instant (even though I realise they are much less powerful).

Jamais vu.5284:

How about to reduce dependency on Arcana, reduce the recharge of each attunement based on the trait lines you invested in? I.e. investing in Air makes only your Air attunement recharge faster.
The Arcana CD reduction might be either added on top, or the trait line effect might be changed wholly.

That is a good idea, unfortunately, each trait line already has two stats (like crit chance + crit damage) attributed to it, but they could make it a minor trait or something, but I still feel that would mean some attunements having 16s cooldown and others having 10s, and that would make attunement swapping very confusing, since you won’t be able to remember which one you left first to figure out the next attunement cooldown. And it would leave 16s attunement swaps, which is much too long.

Air attunement is definitely the single target attunement, dagger and scepter implemented it just fine, but ArenaNet mixed things up when making staff spells, making our single target capibility very low.

For this reason, the 1 and 2 spells should be swapped, and the 2 spell should have higher damage on the primary target, with 30% less damage on each successive bounce, meaning it doesn’t get too powerful when vsing Rangers.

Windbourne speed needs a bigger radius, and Static Field needs to be fixed to actually fit its animation.

Sorry I’ve mainly repeated what you said, but that’s because I agree with most of the changes.

The changes in attunements and traits is definitely a step in the right direction, but I fear it would be too strong this way, as having fast attunements without traiting can be quite overpowered when adding in bonuses for each attunement and making the bonuses last, and it would make the arcane tree almost useless. Another option would be to have default attunement recharge be 12seconds and the second arcane minor trait could reduce it by 2 seconds. Or the arcane tree reduces it by 1% per point (going down to 9second recharge) and the second minor trait affects the boon like you said.

I think it’s difficult for them to entirely change attunements and their traits without having lots of elementalists complain about it on top of all the players complaining about an overpowered buff.

However I do think attunements are too essential to the profession for them to NEED to be traited in cooldown, unlike virtues, burst skills, steal and shatter skills, where it isn’t necessary to reduce their cooldowns for them to be viable.

I found this thread because I was searching for someone who wanted that exact change to gust. I think the projectile is so slow that it will never hit someone over 600 range, so changing it to that range is fine by me.

In particular, I completely agree that it should act as an instant cone knockback however I think 30 second cooldown is fine. Players have to be able to counter it however, so a 1/4 or 1/2 second cast time might be in order for them to see a dodge-able animation.

—

Fire should be our AoE attunement, so increasing the splash radius of fireball to 300 is a great idea, but the damage should be reduced (maybe to that of the current chain lightning) to balance it.
I also think flame burst could be castable whether or not you’re facing your target, because most of the time I find that it doesn’t manage to cast because I’m not perfectly facing the target, and I think it should be one of those “cast while escaping” spells.

—

Water autoattack is useless. The damage is terrible, the healing splash radius is impossible to use effectively. I can’t believe it made it this far with that radius. However, a 500heal on autoattack can not have 600 radius, it would be too easy to make elementalist a healing class in that situation, 300 seems better. Although to me it should apply regeneration or chill the target for 1s.

Then there’s Ice Spike. I think that’s a very needed change because I think it’s a waste to have to use up the earth attunement cooldown to get a blast finisher in our geyser. I have a problem with it only stacking 5 stacks of vulnerability for 10 seconds because it has such a slow cast + landing + cooldown, that a single elementalist is only ever able to put up 10 stacks of vulnerability at a time, whilst sacrificing a lot of potential damage from other attunements and 8 stacks seems much better without being too overpowered.

Geyser doesn’t need a radius buff imo, it’s a very strong heal and with blasting staff it has a nice radius. Adding an extra second can be vital to other players getting an extra blast or leap finisher in, mostly because of reaction times.
Frozen ground could do with a reduced cooldown. In my opinion no weapon skill (across all professions) should have anything more than a 30second cooldown, but that’s an other issue.

—

Earth is nearly fine. Eruption does great bleed damage as well as direct damage, it should take time to erupt, but I agree the cast time should be reduced. Also, if it fails to cast, the animation should NOT continue, as it’s very deceiving and can lead to failed combos and wasted attunement swaps!

The elementalist class should not have torment. Torment as the name implies is a dark skill that can be applied by “dark” and tormenting classes. Mesmer, thief and necromancer are the perfect professions for this kind of condition. (On a side note, condition warriors desperately needed it as a cover up condition, but I don’t agree with them having it to be honest, as it doesn’t fit the profession, and the way it applies stacks over time is slightly too strong.)
Instead, if you were to buff grasping earth, I would make it more like temporal curtain : It should apply 5 seconds of cripple every time someone walks over it, without reapplying it on that player until 5 seconds have passed, making for 10seconds maximum of cripple on a 30s cooldown, which is the same as now, except more reliable.

Don’t change shockwave! It’s a great skill, but it does need to be a faster projectile

arka.8456:

What about, if the buff had unlimited duration, but you could only have 1 or them. So use it once on your preferred attunement, then afterwards use it as a stun breaker.

EG: You use it in fire, your attacks now have the chance to burn, but if you use it as a stun breaker in earth, you lose the chance to burn with fire and now have a chance to cripple instead. If you slot out the skill, you lose the buff.

The up time gain isn’t that much of a buff, if you have quick glyphs its a 6 sec buff from what you can have currently, 15sec without it. This change will simply allow you to not have to choose between having a stun-breaker, and using the skill for the actual buff, which will be crucial in increasing the actual usefulness of the skill.

I think this is the best idea so far. I would love it if that change was made.
Having the unlimited boon isn’t that much of a buff, as you said, as you can pretty much have it 100% of the time. It shouldn’t be a passive / active kind of thing, because that’s how sigils work, and they shouldn’t have a glyph working exactly like a sigil.

I hope Arena Net will read this thread and consider this change, I would love a glyph build to be viable in PvP!

I am posting because when selecting the Elementalist spell “Glyph of Renewal” (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glyph_of_Renewal) from the Utility Skill panel or the Slot Skills page, the cast time is said to be 1¼ seconds, yet the activation time then changes to 4¼ seconds once it’s on the toolbar.

Now 4¼ seconds is a ridiculously long cast time for a spell that is supposed to save an ally, as it wouldn’t even resurrect them before a stomp in sPvP, and they would die from damage before the skill finishes otherwise. This leads me to believe that the skill should be at 1¼ second cast time, but is bugged and therefore takes much longer to cast than it is supposed to.

This is also the case underwater where the cast time is instead ½ seconds. It seems to me that this is also wrong, although this is much more favourable to 4¼ seconds, and in my opinion it should be that speed. But as I’m only reporting the bug, not my preferences for the spell, I’d be happy as long as you fix it back to 1¼ seconds as it should be

Additional input: I just ordered 250 green wood logs for 8c then 200 green wood logs for 8c. Ten minutes later I now have 200 green wood logs while my order for 250 wood logs is still waiting for a seller. Coincidence? I think not.
At highest order price, any order above 200 of an item will not complete a purchase. It only works for orders from 1-200.

Edit : Just did the same for 250 iron ore then 200 iron ore each for 7c. Only completed order is the one for 200 ore but not the one for 250. I’m now absolutely positive that orders at highest bid price of above 200 of an item are bugged.

EDIT : Another update. In all my posts it seems I’ve been wrong about something. Orders above 200 do seem to work, as ordering 249 works fine. The same can be said for sales of 249. However, orders and sales of 250 still do not work, which is incredibly annoying for ordering/selling anything above 250 items since the default stacks will be stacks of 250.

Pie Formation.8196:

I have been able to buy 250 of items (specifically: iron ore, platinum ore, ghost peppers) without any problems. The problem is possibly that you put in an order at the highest buy price, but there are a bunch of people in line before you at that price, and they get their orders first, or that the buy price goes up after you order. Have you tried increasing the highest buy price by 1 copper?

Thanks for your input.
You say you were able to buy 250 of items, but is this at the highest order price or at 1copper above? (NOTE: I’m referring to ORDER not an instant purchase) The reason for this question is as follows :
No I have not tried increasing the highest buy price by 1 copper because I wish to be able to buy such items at the lowest price possible (within reason). If I were to buy say 1000 of an item that I would like to have for 7copper but instead buy it at 8copper i would spend 80silver instead of 70 silver which is 10 silver more which in my opinion is a huge loss considering it is above 10% of the original value of the item I wanted to pay for.
I have been mostly trying with iron ore and copper ore by the way.

As I said : I HIGHLY DOUBT that it is because I am consistently unlucky with orders of 250 so I really don’t understand what is going on.
“And they get their orders first, or that the buy price goes up after you order.” Although I am aware of the unreliability of prices and the everchanging economy in a new MMORPG, I have studied the TP for 2 days and am now certain that the consistent highest order price of copper is 16c and of iron is 7c. Sometimes there may be the occasional order at 17c and at 8c that’ll make my orders wait but they are not up often enough for this to be a good explanation.
In addition, please keep in mind that I have been able to make orders at anything from 1-200 but it is only when ordering between 201-250 of an item that I will never have a purchase for the item, EVER. Not even 1 little copper ore or anything.

It may be alot to ask, but if you try to recreate the scenario at hand: Try to buy 250 green wood logs (they seem to buy and sell faster than iron ore and cost less than copper ore) at 8 copper. Wait out 30 minutes to be sure. If you received the items – stop there and report this to me. If not, then cancel this order and order 200 green wood logs at the same 8 copper. Please share with me your results

Edit : Currently Green Wood Logs are at 9c. Try with Iron ore instead for 7c

This is mostly directed at ArenaNet staff as I believe this is a bug that needs to be fixed, although if other players have or have not experienced this problem, your input is very welcome in order to add further light upon this issue.

I have tried many times to buy items in large quantities on the Trading Post. The problem is : when I place an order for 250 of an item in high supply at the highest order price, I can wait hours on end and I will never buy even ONE of that item. However, when I place an order for 200 of that item at the same order price, I will receive the item (in different stacks of 47, 93, 24 or whatever) in about a minute, although not fast enough for quick completion of orders above 200.
This leads me to believe that the Trading Post does not function correctly with orders of quantities of above 200. This means that if for example I try to buy 1000 of an item in 4 different orders of 250, or even 5 orders of 200 in an attempt to bypass this issue, I will never be able to purchase anything. This has happened to me also when selling items, and I cannot put up more than 200 of an item for sale or it will never sell (however I have only attempted this once as I do not want to lose my deposit in various attempts of figuring out if this is also the case for selling)

I have read about this issue on other websites such as blogs about the Trading Post, where the comments mention the same problems in buying large quantities. This reaffirms my position in saying that it is a bug and not a case of me being extremely unlucky and facing competition only when placing orders of 250, but never of 200.

To summarise my very long winded post : I can’t order or sell anything in stacks of more than 200 on the TP because the order will never complete.

Thank you for reading and I hope you can fix this problem quickly. I am aware of the problems you have been having with the Trading Post lately but I hope you can still fix this bug.

EDIT : Seems like this is actually only the case for orders of 250. Anything between 1 and 249 is fine