Guild Wars 2

zomgbuffalo.5276:

Linnael.1069:

Westenev.5289:

To be fair, I think Taimi is there for a reason. With everyone going their separate ways, I think Taimi has taken it upon herself to look after the Commander, who admittedly must not be feeling great given how their “team” has fallen apart around them. Unlike the rest of the team, the Pact Commander has no emotional crutch to rely on, and is thus the most emotionally vulnerable member.

As for the “Asuran” focused resources – Taimi is an Asura. It makes sense that when she plays mission control, the resources at her disposal are mainly affiliated with Asuran interests – similar to how we used pact resources when we lead the story as the “Commander of the Pact”.

I don’t think Taimi is the issue of the story at present – if anything, I’d say her writing was one of the things done right. The reason why she is the lynchpin of the season is because she’s the only member of Dragons Watch who could be there for our character through and through.

The player character should feel that they have agency and power in the story. The fact that Taimi consistently “plays mission control” is exactly the problem. The player, the commander of the pact, should be in control of the mission, not some npc kid.

And I dunno about you, but I don’t really agree that the role you’ve outlined for Taimi makes for a good story. Depending on an immature child as an emotional crutch isn’t exactly my idea of a fantasy epic, or a role that my character/myself could even identify with. I’m not emotionally devastated by braham leaving, I’m annoyed that we even have to spend time dealing with these childish problems.

To live up to the big set pieces coming up (gods, dragons, elona) Arenanet needs to tell bigger, more dramatic stories. Taimi’s one element holding them back from that. She works best in small doses imo. Keep her on comic relief, away from the main storyline.

I don’t know about you, but Season 3 has been pretty God kitten ed epic. It’s your problem you’re concentrated on one thing: Taimi, and can’t see anything else. First Mursaat, then the God revealing himself, new AMAZING maps, all this tension between in-game characters makes a pretty epic story.

Some people like Phlunt more than Taimi, while I prefer Taimi. Some people might say they want Braham to become a pact commander. I say why don’t you all shut the hell up and enjoy the story as it is? I mean, I would like that my father was a president. Am I whining about it? Nah, because you can’t change it. And there are too many opinions to appeal to everyone.

Forums are for discussion. If you’re just here to tell people who disagree with you to shut up, then this isn’t the place for you.

Westenev.5289:

To be fair, I think Taimi is there for a reason. With everyone going their separate ways, I think Taimi has taken it upon herself to look after the Commander, who admittedly must not be feeling great given how their “team” has fallen apart around them. Unlike the rest of the team, the Pact Commander has no emotional crutch to rely on, and is thus the most emotionally vulnerable member.

As for the “Asuran” focused resources – Taimi is an Asura. It makes sense that when she plays mission control, the resources at her disposal are mainly affiliated with Asuran interests – similar to how we used pact resources when we lead the story as the “Commander of the Pact”.

I don’t think Taimi is the issue of the story at present – if anything, I’d say her writing was one of the things done right. The reason why she is the lynchpin of the season is because she’s the only member of Dragons Watch who could be there for our character through and through.

The player character should feel that they have agency and power in the story. The fact that Taimi consistently “plays mission control” is exactly the problem. The player, the commander of the pact, should be in control of the mission, not some npc kid.

And I dunno about you, but I don’t really agree that the role you’ve outlined for Taimi makes for a good story. Depending on an immature child as an emotional crutch isn’t exactly my idea of a fantasy epic, or a role that my character/myself could even identify with. I’m not emotionally devastated by braham leaving, I’m annoyed that we even have to spend time dealing with these childish problems.

To live up to the big set pieces coming up (gods, dragons, elona) Arenanet needs to tell bigger, more dramatic stories. Taimi’s one element holding them back from that. She works best in small doses imo. Keep her on comic relief, away from the main storyline.

Just got the chance to play through episode 5 and I’m getting pretty tired of this trend where Taimi is getting bigger and bigger story roles. She’s been alright in the comic relief role through the communicator, but honestly the character has zero place in serious story moments. She’s a stuck up brat, and it’s so kitten annoying when moments that should be dramatic and epic are just ruined by her attitude. I don’t know why the devs seem to love her so much, but honestly I think they need to realize that Taimi’s not nearly as great as they think seem to think she is.

Problem is there’s 0 interaction. The range is so high half the time the rocks are in the air before you can see them, and there’s nothing you can do once the rocks are launched to stop getting hit. The mastery you would expect to be useful, stealth gliding, does jack kitten.

Condi was supposed to be attrition based long term damage. Nowadays somebody at anet keeps trying to push for conditions to also be viable at burst damage, but doesn’t realize that cleanses are useless against a bunch of 1-2 second burns.

Why should you get to burst people by only investing in one stat, condidamage, when power burst builds have to invest in 3 stats?

Is it even questionable why condibuilds have been so broken since forever when there is such an obvious, objective, statistical imbalance here?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4uojtr/skillbalance_changes_started_showing_up_in_the_api/

ANet r u srs

Ilias.8647:

It depends…

Modern ships and ocean-worthy vessels of the 15th century were higher. Still, there were ships that were really low. Ships of antiquity in Mediterranean Sea weren’t high! Ancient Greeks had really low ships and that why they didn’t travel that much during winter.

Then again, as others mentioned already, there are soooo maaany exaggerations in Guild Wars universe that the height of sea worthy vessels is the least.

Well you’re talking about ships of a different design. The problem isn’t that the models aren’t realistic, it’s that they aren’t internally consistent. Even just based on looking at the ship model in-game, there’s no way they would be riding that low, and if they were they would be sinking.

I first noticed it in the cutscenes after claw island, and I’m seeing it again in the trailer for new capricorn map.

Big ships do not sit so low in the water!

Whenever I see a ship in GW2 traveling anywhere, all I can think about is how quickly that thing would be taking on water and sinking. Please get your animators to take a look at some reference pictures of real ships on the water. It’s horribly ugly to see these big ships of the line embedded halfway into the water, gliding around perfectly level.

This needs to be changed ASAP. Essentially gates the collection behind purposefully failing. Encourages you to not participate in dps so you have more chances to get the whirlpool. Massive kittening timegate given that teq only spawns like twice a day and most people can’t play for that long. Nothing about it is fun or interesting.

In my opinion, one of the worst things this game does is introduce new characters for every new job, instead of sticking with and developing a set of recognizable ones. The introduction of the b-iconics particularly rankled, as there was such a good roster of supporting characters to develop and instead they had to bring up a brand new batch that don’t even fit the context of your story.

That aside, what characters do you want to see come back in season 3? Who would benefit most from some continued development? Who would just be cool to see on screen again?

Personally I’d vote for Mai Trin. With Scarlet gone and the remains of her armies still hanging around, it makes perfect sense for the Aetherblades to return from the mists, and for Mai to start filling that power vacuum in her own way. Plus she was such a good boss fight the first time, it would be awesome to see what else the could do with her. Maybe she’s still angry at Scarlet for throwing the aetherblades under the bus and we can convince her to team up with us! Maybe we need somebody to captain the new airship fleet we’re rebuilding in the Lion’s Arch Aerodrome, and the leader of the sky pirates is just what a city of pirates needs! I dunno, there’s just so many places they could take Mai Trin it would be fantastic to see her return.

What do you guys think?

So you run around with GS/Sword. Thief mugs yous and you’re stuck in combat with a bunch of interrupt traits and no CC. Useless

So you go into fights with Hammer/Mace/Shield. Everybody walks away from you. Useless.

The no-mobility criticism is 100% fair for any roaming build and it absolutely applies here.

PowerBottom.5796:

Linnael.1069:

Supreme.3164:

PowerBottom.5796:

Most ppl here haven’t played against good thieves I guess. The problem aren’t the spikes, it’s the pressure with impacting disruption headshots and steal/shadowshot/shadowstep into autoattacks – at least for me it was.

Best advice is to LoS well and set up overloads, use absorb/reflect/blinds against the ranged interrupts and spike him down when he tries to come in for AA’s.

On certain nodes, where you can’t really LoS the thief, it’s IMHO almost unwinnable.

^this, unwinnable it’s the correct word

Zerk fresh air should be taking tempest defense. Thief has literally 0 answers to shocking aura. It’s one of the most onesided matchups in the game.

ooookay….. ^^’

Let me explain how a good thief plays this MU:
- stay ranged, spam headshots to interrupt the overloads or any other spells, this will also trigger tempest defense, making it utterly useless in this MU. It will also proc impacting disruption, dealing huge amounts of dmg.
- As soon as ele switches out of air, he goes in for autoattacks (often with a steal, to take away your prot).
- Then he goes ranged and likely invis again and does it all over again.

There’s no way you’ll outsustain it, since you deal no dmg to the thief if you don’t land an insane stun/knockback-combo, which good thiefs won’t let happen.

I’m so tired of people who are simply bad at the game assuming that their personal failings should be addressed by balance changes.

You’re literally losing to headshot spam playing fresh air. And still have the balls to come and pretend like you know what you’re talking about. Maybe it makes you feel better about your losses to think that the matchup is a bad one, but it’s doing the rest of the community a disservice to spread delusions as facts.

Supreme.3164:

PowerBottom.5796:

Most ppl here haven’t played against good thieves I guess. The problem aren’t the spikes, it’s the pressure with impacting disruption headshots and steal/shadowshot/shadowstep into autoattacks – at least for me it was.

Best advice is to LoS well and set up overloads, use absorb/reflect/blinds against the ranged interrupts and spike him down when he tries to come in for AA’s.

On certain nodes, where you can’t really LoS the thief, it’s IMHO almost unwinnable.

^this, unwinnable it’s the correct word

Zerk fresh air should be taking tempest defense. Thief has literally 0 answers to shocking aura. It’s one of the most onesided matchups in the game.

I think there is a good reason for weapon swaps having significant cooldown. No CD weapon swaps multiply the number of skills and effects involved in the fight at any given time. If you look at other classes that exceed the normal weapon swap rate, namely elementalist and engineer, you can see that they pay for that power on each individual skill. Ele commonly looks at 30-40 second cooldowns on its weapon skills, and Engie gives up utility slots for its kits.

I wanted to keep quick pockets situated at a reasonable initiative gain rate. 3/8 is already more than any other guaranteed source of initiative gain. Perhaps it could go to 30%, and 50% with warrior runes, but any more than that and it does edge into OP territory, and you would have to take nerfs elsewhere.

Yannir.4132:

Snip

Thanks for the detailed feedback! You’re definitely right about Redirect needing a damage cap, I didn’t really consider the teamfight applications.

However, I do think that Reposition should stay at three activations. If you note that the range on each is only 360, which is barely past lightning whip range, it trades some of the mobility of lightning flash for more mindgaming potential. If we say you lose the chain activations after a little bit of time then the triple stunbreak factor doesn’t really seem that big of a deal given that your opponent could just hold their CC.

Rearrange could go to 30 for sure. It would be a chain skill that the player chooses to cast, like shadowstep/shadow return. With all the accidental stab people are throwing out with the elite specs, I don’t think pure cc warrants too high of a cooldown anymore. If you wanted to limit the utility, 35 or 40 seconds could be justified by attaching some large damage to the second cast.

Reclassify I think would be too strong if there wasn’t that downside. It’s a totally unlimited condi convert on a 10 second cooldown, that’s the kind of thing that is pretty risky to design and not have be broken. Boon conversion keeps it from being a spammable thing, because if you try to just use it on cooldown you turn the boons from your last cast straight back into condis XD.

I like the idea of having this powerful ability where the limitation is the state of the game and your decision making ability rather than a cooldown or energy cost.

Remove wouldn’t limit their movement or dodges at all, it would just lock all their skills and make them invulnerable. Like all invulnerable effects this would stop capture point contribution. But be careful, because it applies to all players, not just enemies. Throw it on the point and you’re likely to lock out your teammates too.

You should probably be aware that taking full dire gear is kind of looked down upon by alot of the roaming community. There’s a very good reason no dire amulet was ever released for PvP. Not a big deal, but be ready for some rude whispers.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Suggestion-Elite-Spec-Weaver/first#post6078364

Wrote this up recently, hoping for some feedback. I think because somebody else had used the name already it might have been a bit confusing, but this is new stuff!

It’s working. If the aura lasted 4 seconds when you hovered over the icon at start you would only ever see 3, because the game cuts off decimal values like 3.99. I’ve been playing on my ele and counting the proper 5+, even though you’ll see the aura buff icon read 4 by the time you can mouse over it.

Quick Pockets: Gain 3 Initiative when you swap weapons in combat. Weapon Swap Cooldown is Reduced by 20%

Given that Quick Pockets was moved to compete with the ubiquitous Sleight of Hand GM, I feel that it deserves a buff. Swap CDR is both on theme for the trait and a great choice from a design standpoint for two reasons:

1: Thieves playing more with weapon swap would be particularly interesting because of how core combos and dual skills are to the class. Think about being able to Cnd-swap-Backstab in an s/d build, or having access to BP-Swap-HS for on demand stealth in a pistol whip build.

2: Quick Pockets is also a particularly good trait to buff because it rewards you for having two weapons sets you actually want to use in combat. There would be an actual trade-off between shortbow and sleight of hand for more mobility, and quick pockets for better performance in combat. As it is too much of the thief’s power is locked up in shortbow 5.

On a final note, it would be cool if this stacked with warrior runes for 6.4 second swap cooldown. Think about 3ini/6s.

Every two weeks. Balance changes need to get to the point where they can fine tune things. 3 month patches aren’t tuning, they’re just bashing the meta into a new shape with a hammer.

A Weaver is inherently flexible, and as such they enjoy many unique Specialization choices:

GM-Master of the Fourth Dimension: Weaving a spell reduces its cooldown by 66% and grants 5s of quickness to affected allies.

GM-Strength of Will: Your manipulations have doubled range and recharge 20% faster. Manipulations grant aegis to nearby allies. Only improves range, not radius of effect.

GM-Indiscriminate Force: Weaving a spell doubles its effects. Woven spells also affect you.

Hey guys, I hope you enjoyed the concept so far. This is definitely a work in progress, so let me know what you think of everything. Some of the skill names I’m not too keen on, and I haven’t even decided whether I’d like to give it sword or greatsword, so tell me which weapon you would prefer too!

The Weaver: Elementalists see the world in terms of fire, water, air, and earth, but some seek an even deeper understanding of the world’s composition. Weavers have learned to manipulate the most fundamental forces and properties of the universe, augmenting their power by changing the very definition of power itself.

The weaver’s profession mechanic is Skill Weaving: Weavers are unbound by the limitations of the four elements, and so are their skill bars. Attuning to a new element while you cast a weapon skill gives that ability a powerful effect when it completes casting and Weaves that skill onto your new skill bar. For example, casting an Earthquake and attuning to Fire would cause your earthquake to burn foes and weave Earthquake onto your fire attunement skill bar, replacing Ring of Fire. Changing attunements without weaving a skill resets all of your skill bars to their original state. Skills weaved into multiple attunements share a cooldown across all attunements.

Weavers gain access to Manipulations: Weavers can alter the very fabric of the universe, revising the battlefield with frightening flexibility in the blink of an eye.

-Reconfigure: 1/4s Cast 20s CD: Heal yourself for 5k. If this skill fully heals you, deal damage around yourself. If it does not, heal yourself and allies around you for 2k.

-Reposition: Instant Cast 30s CD: Stunbreak. Teleport to target position within 360 range. This skill can be cast up to twice more over the next ten seconds.

-Redirect: Instant Cast 50s CD: Block incoming attacks for 3 seconds, then deal damage around yourself equal to the damage you blocked. Damage is limited in PvE.

-Rearrange: Instant Cast 25s CD: Stunbreak. Pull nearby enemies towards you. Chains to a skill that pushes enemies away. Radius, pull distance, and knockback distance are all 360 units. No damage. Both casts break stuns.

-Reclassify: Instant Cast 10s CD: Turn your conditions into boons, and your boons into conditions.

-Elite: Remove: 1s Cast 60s CD: Remove all players in target location from this world, disabling all their skills but leaving them invulnerable for three seconds. At the end of this effect each player returns to existence with a damaging AoE. 900 Range, 360 Radius on cast and return damage. Return damage would hit about as hard as ring of earth, so it would be mediocre on a single player, but the overlapping AoEs could do massive damage in total.

Death magic is stupidly underrated as is. Corrupter’s fervor, deadly strength, reaper’s protection are borderline OP and should absolutely not be touched. Try death magic in a build thats built for it; just because it doesnt synergize with the meta archetypes doesn’t mean it needs to be shoehorned into that role.

Shepherd.5839:

Every two weeks is completely unreasonable. Should they update more frequently than they do? Yeah probably. Every two weeks? Yeah that makes sense for a pro scene….
Seriously though, trying to adapt to a new meta every other week would be insane, even every month can be very difficult. That’s a strategy that favors not good teams but teams that can adapt quickly to cheese.

I don’t know what competitive background you’re coming from, but balance patches generally don’t blow up the whole meta or create cheese you’d need to play around.

The fact that you think balance patches must inevitably result in an unbalanced mess afterwards kind of just speaks to how terribly ANet’s screwed things up.

Given that their balance has been in the same state all the way back to LS1, which is a pretty kitten ing observation all by itself, I’m gonna go ahead and hold off on full tinfoil.

Dota 2 also does continuous tweaking and bugfixing every single week. Anet just treats bugs as gameplay elements.

LoL and Hots are on the same kind of schedule. You can’t chooose between quality or quantity if you want to be competitive. You just have to be good enough to do both

The fact that they’re trying to do “esports” without doing this blows my mind.

If you could do LS every other week, you better not have any excuses for not pushing a balance patch every other week. There is no other option here.

Either start doing it, or everybody keeps treating competitive pvp like the joke it is.

zapv.8051:

Churning earth is probably the worst skill to base buffs to another skill around, most good eles barely use it all. If they do it’s probably to bait a dodge and not to actually use the skill. Long cast times that don’t generate pulsing or unavoidable effects in pvp are just not good with how many interrupts are floating around.

Aoe chill on focus is probably unnecessary. It is supposed to be a damage burst type weapon. We already debilitate our enemies really well. Adding on more vuln, weakness, chill, and cripple won’t really help. The things necros need to be able to spec into better at this point are support, burst damage, some reliable disengage/mobility and general usability in pve. Again, these are things we need to be able to spec for at the cost of 1vs1 tankiness, sustain damage in pvp, debuffing and boon strip which is what necros do well.

Most of churning earth’s problems come from the fact that it’s an elementalist skill. Given that necro’s defense tools are all built around sitting there and soaking as best as possible, we’re probably actually the best possible class to put such a skill on. Combined with the fact that my suggestion carries only about half the channel time of the actual ele skill I think you’d find the skill much stronger than you give it credit for. The entire cast fits easily within the length of a terror-boosted doom or a dark pact.

I fundamentally disagree with your assessment that the necromancer should get those other options at the cost of what we are good at. Just for example, I’d much rather see a game where necro has the powerful tools necessary to prevent a thief from disengaging, than I would see one where the necro gets disengage tools like a thief.

Bhawb.7408:

Linnael.1069:

Blast on spinal shivers apparently doesn’t fit the theme, but what if you just made spinal shivers aoe? Change the animation to something like churning earth, it can keep the current cast time, but goes up to a 15 target cap 900 radius blast. Now that would be a skill 5 worth having.

Spinal Shivers is much better designed as a single target honestly. It is meant to be used similar to Corrupt Boon, when the target has 3+ boons (hence the pretty mediocre effect without boons), and that really wants more single target so that you can see the person being effected. Having it be 5 target would just make it another skill you used on CD without much care, since someone will probably have enough boons to be worthwhile.

Would prefer they make it strong single target above anything else.

I’d argue that turning it into a second and a half channel ala churning earth would actually discourage spamming it on cooldown. You have to think pretty hard before you invest in big casts like that, otherwise you just get blown up sitting still or blinded. It would be a way to respond to AoE boonsharing from shout guards/eles blasting, while it wouldn’t be worth taking yourself out of the fight to hit the one guy that incidentally has alot of boons.

Alekt.5803:

They could start by doing some QoL changes to staff to the offensive casts. The changes are thought to not influence the current PvE staff builds, and will not buff them in the direction they are known to be excelling at.

Lava Font. First tick of damage instant.

Healing Rain Cast time is slow, and does not feel like the proper clear mechanic it should be. It would be more rewarding if the regeneration was removed (in my opinion) to increase the condition clear mechanic.
Duration 6 seconds —--> 4 seconds
Pulses number 3——>4
Clears one condition per pulse.
Add a minor heal per pulse. 350 × 0,25 healing power
Cast time 1,25 seconds —-> 0,75 seconds
(It could even apply soothing mist to the targets in the area at the end of the water field to increase the number of affected targets by Soothing mist. #Soothing Power Synergy)

Lightning Surge. Reduce cooldown to 5 seconds to synergize more with Fresh Air builds. Reduce cast time to 1 second from 1 1/4 seconds.

Gust. Either add a minor damage, make it more reliable, or reduce cast time. Something is just plain wrong when someone can jump without dodging to evade it.

Shockwave Increase velocity, increase bleed stack and reduce the duration of the bleed.
Bleed stack 1 —-> 3
Bleed duration 20 seconds —-> 8 seconds

Magnetic Aura Reduce cooldown, make it apply 5 seconds of cripple in a 240 radius around the caster. (Bonus: And clear 1 condition.)
Cooldown 30 seconds —-> 25 seconds

Trait:
Earthen Blast The cripple when attuning to earth when traited. Add a short but intense bleed to it. Like 3 stacks of bleeding for 3 seconds.

Serrated Stones Actually it’s 20% bleed duration, deal 5% more damage to bleeding foes.

Change it to: Increase Bleed and Cripple duration by 25 % Crippling a foe applies 1 stack of bleeding for 3 seconds. Deal 5% more damage to bleeding foes; Increase critical hit chance against crippled foes by 10%.

Thanks for the staff perspective. I haven’t actually touched staff in pvp for a long time, so it’s interesting to see your take on what needs improving. Soothing mist being applied by weapon skills is particularly interesting.

Blast on spinal shivers apparently doesn’t fit the theme, but what if you just made spinal shivers aoe? Change the animation to something like churning earth, it can keep the current cast time, but goes up to a 15 target cap 900 radius blast. Now that would be a skill 5 worth having.

Sublimatio.6981:

meow one twenty.4376:

Linnael.1069:

Would change the wvw meta overnight. This kind of thing might actually discourage stacking

…that’s a good thing, right?

depends if someone likes stacking or not

Lol yea that’s a good thing. I’m just bringing up how huge a deal combo field denial is, because it seemed alot of people were treating it as only a slight buff, when in reality that one skill would be 100% mandatory for every zerg engagement ever.

Let me make something clear. When I play I solo-roam and wvw/os duel. I’ve been doing this since launch, and I do these things in a full berserker d/d lightning rod build. If you’re coming here to tell me to just change my playstyle until things start working out, save it. 3 or 4 v 1 are not unusual engagements for me. Things work for me just fine.

I’m not posting this to stroke kitten or whatever, but rather because alot of people are trying to derail the thread by turning it into a personal problem. If you aren’t good enough to look at the mechanics of the class as a whole and identify where it’s objectively lacking, that’s on you, not me.

Let me make it a little simpler: when’s the last time you’ve seen an ele in competitive play wearing anything squishier than cele? Not running water/arcane? This thread assumes you’re intelligent enough to know why the answers to those questions are what they are and is asking for good feedback in response.

Would change the wvw meta overnight. This kind of thing might actually discourage stacking

Kodama.6453:

Linnael.1069:

Well of Crows. 2 second channel, then does a 1500 range shadowstep and drops the well at your destination. Does 50% more damage than WoS and immobilizes.

comes with cawcawcaw sound effect

So necromancers become fiddlesticks? ^^
I don’t think this would fit the theme of wells, but whatever.

Since Anet wants to introduce more stomping skills, how about that.

Well of corpses. Summons a well at the target location. Deals damage and inflicts some conditions on the enemies like poison and bleeding. If there is an enemy in downstate inside of the well, the next pulse will stomp him immediately. Would have a nice animation, the hands of the dead would pull him below the ground.

Lets be real fiddlesticking up into clocktower from beneath would be esports.

Well of Crows. 2 second channel, then does a 1500 range shadowstep and drops the well at your destination. Does 50% more damage than WoS and immobilizes.

comes with cawcawcaw sound effect

Son of Urza.1692:

Flumek.9043:

You forgot the most important detail

• mirror blade homes and is regular flying projectile
• focus#4 doesnt home and is hovering projectile aka it gets pebble stuck

Game engine is our biggest hardcounter.

Reaper’s Touch doesn’t home? The Wiki article says that it does. I suppose the article could be wrong. Can’t comment on the other, haven’t tested that in particular, but if true that’s another huge disadvantage.

It does home. The hovering thing is the biggest annoyance, but its meant to be a touch skill anyways so thats passable.

If you’re having problems playing dire anything you just need to improve. There’s a reason they keep dire out of pvp.

nearlight.3064:

Linnael.1069:

nearlight.3064:

Don’t run fire. Blinding ashes is kitten for fresh air builds, with or without the nerf that happened. Run earth over fire for geomancer’s freedom (S/F F skill profit) and written in stone and use one with air to the fullest.

Also tempest over arcane makes fresh air do wayyyyyy more damage than you could hope for with just base ele, so theres that. One fresh air S/F air/earth/tempest game I played during the last beta, I did 800K physical damage, which is more than burst ele can typically do.

Did you read the thread at all. I’m not looking for a build bro.

Oh I did, I just thought it’d be better to dispel the notion that things like blinding ashes are of even any use to a burst ele, which indirectly supports your reasoning.

If you want my actual suggestions, I just think that elementalist needs lower cooldowns on active defenses, especially through utilities. Lowering obsidian flesh’s CD from 50 to 45 or even 40 seconds would help a lot, as would lowering arcane shield’s ridicoulous CD to like 30 seconds or so.

Its kind of bullkitten that cleansing fire and the kittenty water signet are our only sources of condition removal from utilites, so we have to rely on overly traiting synergies to get that. Yeah we could trait cantrips on ele to get enough cleanse, but those skills don’t help burst builds at all in the way that say… traited quickening zephyr, entangle, troll unugent, and lightning relex help a power survival ranger well… survive, while also being able to burst people down. Water signet should remove 3 conditions on active instead of the kitten chill. One of the tempest shouts needs to remove a few condis as well, and I’d even wager to say I’d LOVE it if cleansing water got removed entirely to compensate for us getting much better personal cleanse in different areas that aren’t dependent on water/cantrips/arcane, which is one of the reasons why building tempest builds is difficult. You need to drop either or both of water/arcane to make tempest aura builds worth it, but building for cleanse that way is almost impossible.

Your negate invulnerability idea is interesting, but I’d rather they just change the vamp rune mist proc into, “you gain the vampiric aura effect on yourself” so theives/mesmers cease to be carried by them.

I like the idea of moving cleanses off of water line and into baseline functionality, but unfortunately I think that’s just too large of a change for ANet to make.

Cutting CDs on active defense is absolutely a good idea. I’d go a step further and say we need more active defense that isn’t tied to focus. Focus should be the defensive group support weapon, but as it is we’re so strapped for active mitigation that everybody runs it for personal protection. Something like: Frost Aura now removes 3 conditions when you cast the skill and Churning Earth gives you invuln while you channel could go a long way to reducing ele’s dependency on focus to play glass.

Melee pistols could be cool. Point blank shots for huge explosions and lightning bolts ayyyyyy

nearlight.3064:

Don’t run fire. Blinding ashes is kitten for fresh air builds, with or without the nerf that happened. Run earth over fire for geomancer’s freedom (S/F F skill profit) and written in stone and use one with air to the fullest.

Also tempest over arcane makes fresh air do wayyyyyy more damage than you could hope for with just base ele, so theres that. One fresh air S/F air/earth/tempest game I played during the last beta, I did 800K physical damage, which is more than burst ele can typically do.

Did you read the thread at all. I’m not looking for a build bro.

Jski.6180:

Kaleban.9834:

I can’t be the only person to wonder why, on a class with the least access to defensive skills, lowest health, lightest armor, no weapon-swap, nerfed healing coefficients, nerfed mobility and no profession defining defensive abilities like Stealth and Death Shroud, that ANet seems to think nerfing the sole defensive boon is a good balancing decision?

Yet its still one of the hardest to kill class in the game some how despite that lol.
Vigor on cirt is easy to get and for a class like ele nearly getting a free +20% crit chase if you go the same line as the vigo on crit it becomes an “non-boon” as in you simply just have it all the time. The vigor on cantrips is a great deal shorter lasting for the time of the cd on the skills to get it. So at best an 12 sec cd on an heal skill that gives vigor for 6 sec is right on line with an 10 sec cd on crit for 5 sec of vigor that is if your using the heal the sec it comes off of cd and only letting it just go off and stopping it before it go though its full effect.

Because every single ele is forced to build tank.
People like you are why balance is so bad in this game.

“There is no viable build that doesn’t take every defensive trait and utility available while wearing the tankiest stat set that sees use. I’m just going to go ahead and say that the class is fine and hard to kill. hurr”

Given that whatever devs worked on the ele patch obviously have 0 experience trying to play any ele build besides cele at a competitive level, how about we give them some suggestions that would make a glass burst setup more playable?

Current problems with glass ele include:

Worst mitigation and the lowest hp and armor in the game. You’re looking at 50% vigor uptime maximum and a single blind every 8 seconds, only while you are hitting targets. That just doesn’t cut it when mesmers and thieves are throwing aegis/stealth/blind out of every orifice, with better base stats to boot.

So what should we do to solve these issues?

I’ll start off with a few (ok alot of) ideas I’ve had floating around. Obviously you wouldn’t want to implement all of them at the same time, so consider each one on its own.

So what are some suggestions that you guys have? I hope we can get some good ideas going and get some dev attention on non-cele builds.

Bhawb.7408:

zapv.8051:

The regen is bad, it’s clearly an offensive weapon with two skills that hit relatively hard. Regen is probably the least desirable boon on focus.

This. Regen has absolutely no place on the skill, regardless of whether or not the healing is nice. It is a fully offensively focused skill, with a defensive boon slapped on.

zapv.8051:

Also, spinal shivers would still be bad at a 1 second cast. That’s just a 1/4 second reduction, which is not enough to make it hard to dodge at all. I’d suggest they remove the trait chill of death, which is cheap auto proc BS that carries our burst, and compensate by taking spinal shivers down to a 1/2 second cast or less.

The point isn’t to make it impossible to avoid, which is what 1/2s would be, at that point it only has a cast time so you can’t cast it at the same time as other abilities/while CCed. It changes fights in a very big way, it can’t be less than 3/4s, and even that is pushing it for an impactful ability. If any change would be made its to bump up the damage to push it more properly into the roll it is meant to full.

Given that mirror blade is less than half a second before the projectile comes out and is 100% dodge-or-lose if you’re playing glass, i’m having some real problems seeing how 1/2s cast time on spinal shivers would be a problem.

As far as the regen goes, I don’t consider it a problem for a weapon to be able to fill multiple roles. Personally I definitely think that a defensive boon on the bounces has a place, as some sort of mitigation is pretty mandatory when playing with offensive stats.

Perhaps something that would fit the theme better is if the scythe popped an AoE blind around yourself or your ally when it hit them.

People who think these nerfs were good don’t understand the game, and they’re going to be complaining again in a few weeks when they realize cele is still kicking their kitten .

Supreme.3164:

Linnael.1069:

http://dulfy.net/2015/09/26/gw2-twitchcon-skill-balance-update-preview/
Is this a kittening joke.

Burning fire not giving might will pretty much 100% remove zerker ele from the game, while cele ele will hardly even care.

How stupid do you have to be to think that cantrip might is actually going to hit cele? 3 stacks on 60 second cooldowns that a cele build will only pop defensively?
Meanwhile lightning flash/cleansing flame burst builds lose 6-9 might for the burst.

Not to mention they kittening nerf our only active defense. Blind CD up. Vigor CD up.
Yay, everybody is now even more forced to run water cele or get blown up instantly.

I’m kittening done. The elementalist devs have no idea what the kitten they are doing, and its painfully obvious. They do this every time the elementalist gets a strong build. nerf everything except that build to kitten on the class as a whole, so players are even more forced to play that one build and nothing else. There has literally been one competitive tier pvp ele build since the start of the game.

TL;DR: Blind CD up. Vigor CD up. Instant might removed. How is this anything but ANet saying “you want to not play cele? kitten you”.

Elementalist don’t get a strong build from time to time….it has been the same one since the beginning of time, go water/arcana/cantrip or go die in a pit

Exactly. More accurate wording would have been “whenever the ele build gets strong from time to time”.

MadRabbit.3179:

Have fun in World of Warcraft.

Have fun with your illiteracy.

http://dulfy.net/2015/09/26/gw2-twitchcon-skill-balance-update-preview/
Is this a kittening joke.

Burning fire not giving might will pretty much 100% remove zerker ele from the game, while cele ele will hardly even care.

How stupid do you have to be to think that cantrip might is actually going to hit cele? 3 stacks on 60 second cooldowns that a cele build will only pop defensively?
Meanwhile lightning flash/cleansing flame burst builds lose 6-9 might for the burst.

Not to mention they kittening nerf our only active defense. Blind CD up. Vigor CD up.
Yay, everybody is now even more forced to run water cele or get blown up instantly.

I’m kittening done. The elementalist devs have no idea what the kitten they are doing, and its painfully obvious. They do this every time the elementalist gets a strong build. nerf everything except that build to kitten on the class as a whole, so players are even more forced to play that one build and nothing else. There has literally been one competitive tier pvp ele build since the start of the game.

TL;DR: Blind CD up. Vigor CD up. Instant might removed. How is this anything but ANet saying “you want to not play cele? kitten you”.

Lock free players out of typing into /Map and /Say chat.

Otherwise you can kiss the “nicest community in gaming” goodbye and say hello to the dredges of the not-old-enough-to-have-a-job internet.

I see alot of people asking for the burning fire trait to give less might on proc and I feel like people don’t realize this would be nerfing zerk ele even further into the dirt, while hardly touching the cele build they hate.

1: Cele ele repeats a might blasting rotation multiple times in a fight, maxing out might with burning fire procs. This means that most times they get a burning fire proc it gives them 0 additional might.

3: Cele fights are longer. Averaged out over a long fight burning fire is less than 1 stack of might per cantrip if every cantrip is used on cooldown. On the other hand Zerk fights are short and often open with flash/cleansing fire, meaning zerk ele benefits far more from burning fire.

2: Generally, cele ele uses cantrips defensively while zerk ele uses cantrips offensively. Obviously the zerk ele is going to get more out of the might.

3: Cele brings a huge load of condition removal while zerk is usually hard pressed to fit cleanses into the build. Burning fire is again more worth far more to the zerk ele.

A nerf to burning fire would be the exact opposite of what we need. I’m tired of every other ele build getting trashed by poorly thought out attempts to nerf the cele build. Hit burning and also hit the application rates on drake’s breath/ring of fire. Hit the healing power ratios across the board. Just for gods sake stop nerfing the wrong things.

The real answer is too many casuals got into duels they couldn’t handle and couldn’t handle losing so then they became super bitter because a good fight is one thing in the game they’ll never be able to “earn” by spamming 1 and now they’re dead set on denying anybody else from getting it either.

At this point I’m just happy we’re getting the guild hall arena. You kind of have to resign yourself to which part of the community ANet values.