Showing Posts For Luciusbrimstone.7925:
Hi,
I just wanted to leave some feedback on a game I used to really enjoy, to some devs that care about their game.
History: My guild and I (about 10 people) left/deleted GW2 about 6 months ago now, just after the February/March updates. We left in response to updates to the daily quest system, an overhaul to A.C. that we didn’t deem necessary, but by far and large because we decided we didn’t like the direction the game was moving in: specifically, emphasis on temporary content.
I understand that temporary content gives an illusion of an ever-changing world and that element is cool, but I would like to attempt to outline the negative points of temporary content, specifically how it potentially excludes the playerbase from content.
Specifically, temporary content forces a player to play during a intended period of time; I can understand the draw of constantly having events like this, so as to keep the playerbase invested, but this is a double edged sword as well: for those who wish to take a break (either voluntarily or involuntarily) these players might miss out on the content entirely. This effect then snowballs to the point that, well, a player may feel that s/he has missed so much content that s/he may as well not bother playing at all. It creates a sort of wall, keeping old players from returning with the constant reminder that they’ve missed either minor or significant events that will never happen again.
This wouldn’t bother me so much if there was more of a reason for it, you know, past just giving the illusion of ‘a living world.’ Mostly, I don’t see the point of it. I’m assuming a large amount of effort and resources are poured into these updates that will only exist for two weeks, so it just seems wasteful.
One could argue that it’s just events, or items, or story or achievements that one is missing out on and who cares, that isn’t keeping you from playing the game but then.. well, alright, but then why play at all? There are plenty of games that do not punish the playerbase by permanently with holding the vast majority of their updates from those that decide to pursue other venues during those specific time frames.
Anyway, enough ranting, because rather than focus on the negative I’d like to focus on a solution: phasing. Other MMOs utilize a system where only select players can see active content, due to certain qualifications, and after fulfilling said objectives this content would become invisible to those players. This seems like a very viable middle ground between creating a living breathing world without excluding any player based on a time frame. By implementing such a system the world of GW2 could become a mix of the original Guild Wars — with zones that feel specific to a player — while maintaining an MMO atmosphere. This would enable the world to grow and evolve at the player’s pace rather than the world’s, enabling players to experience events that they might have missed otherwise, such as the frost and flame (that was around when I left so it’s the only one I know by name).
Alongside this it would be nice if dailies and monthlies could be accomplished at a later date, rather than having to do them within the 24 hour/month time period. Yeah, it kind of ruins the name ‘dailies’ but a system where you could choose any set of dailies/monthlies you missed would also allow a player more freedom in their play style. I consider this minor in comparison to the remainder of my post and only suggest it because I recall dailies becoming a chore just before I left. When I started they were nice as they could be completed anywhere, since they were non specific, but an update some time later forced one to travel to certain areas or do very specific pieces of content in order to complete a daily requirement and… well, at least for me, I had been going for 100% achievements at that point and that it just stopped being fun, spending an hour or three on dailies alone, you know? Not as bad as wanting to get back into GW2 every now and then but remembering that of about 6 months of updates, I would experience next to nothing of that, but still.
tl;dr: temporary content sucks and there isn’t a reason for it. I think the game would benefit a great deal from either not implementing temporary content (living world) or by introducing some sort of system (like phasing) that would allow players to experience this content on their own terms.
To anyone I may have angered: Hey, this game ended up not being for me and that’s fine. I’m sure you guys are really enjoying it for it’s unique-ness and that I’m just kittenting all over that. Sorry! I just think it could be even better and I wanted to say why.
It’s not exactly backpedaling. Initially I had wanted the core of my post to be groups in general, not how my group runs things. People began asking about points in our group or asserting that if you do something on this list it’s an immediate kick, which it isn’t. More than backpedaling I see this as a sort of evolution of the thread and answering questions/responding to claims. You may name my actions as you will, though.
My group doesn’t ping gear. The specific magic find example I have is while in Arah P.4, a parrot spawned off of a necro.
Additionally, I do join full pickup groups from time to time. I recall seeing these bad behaviors more rampant in said situations, specifically not raising (I do understand there are times when its unreasonable or impossible).
One thing I keep forgetting: there were a few comments about not allowing others to enter the instance. Unfortunately the street concerning trolling goes both ways; we only started doing this after someone exited us from a dungeon, if I recall correctly something came up irl and he had to leave. Sucked. We try to keep instance owner in the hands of someone who won’t do that to anyone, and I understand completely that that is why others in this thread are expressing concern: you guys don’t have any reason to trust us or any other group. Far beyond this being a player issue is that it’s simply a bad aspect of the game causing grievances between people. It sucks for everyone.
(edited by Luciusbrimstone.7925)
I wanted to save this one as a personal little side thing:
Geofrroy, I really enjoyed reading your posts.
Basilisk venom is really amazing in pvp, though I’m not sure if I’d run it in pve. As for hounds.. well, I just think each class has a better alternative. I can see someone justifying hounds in the world for a class like warrior that doesn’t summon pets if they wanted that but past that I don’t think there’s much utility there.
Personally, for ele, I run tornado and almost never use it. I try to save it as an oh-kitten button if we need to spread mobs out, or if I need extra health for some reason. Almost always backfires and gets me killed since I lose access to my normal skills, but whatever. Flaming sword is powerful but I’m not built for it (currently playing around with an auramancer, so losing one or two auras from my weapon skills hurts). Elemental.. I just see it as a more viable alternative to the hounds. The elemental, even earth elemental, still dies a lot in dungeons though, and that’s when he isn’t running off by himself to solo the dredge boss we’re trying not to aggro (I swear I don’t know that guy).
Some other things I wanted to respond to, mostly classes:
Ranged attacks: It’s a pet peeve. It’s been said a few times in the thread and I agree, melee 100% of the time isn’t ideal. There are plenty of cases where you just don’t want to get into melee range.
My concern within that category is more of a generalization: I see these builds and associate them with a lot of bad experiences. There’s a minor thing about less synergy with ranged attacks (as opposed to everyone clustering around the mob to support each other) but that’s certainly debatable/definitely not 100% true.
Scepter Guardian: I’m not saying it’s useless; I believe it’s the 3 that’s the aoe? That move is great for large, smaller groups of mobs and I can see it as a reasonable offhand. I can also totally understand why you would use ranged over a melee alternative: a large amount of players stick to range, so the benefits of guardian melee weapons aren’t nearly as useful. In that case, yeah no, scepter is a sound choice as it’s the most powerful ranged guardian has. Hammer is incredible but you really have to spec for it, and then the group has to be clustered for it to have use. All of that said, I still get a twinge and go hm when I see a scepter guardian because, despite it being their high damage ranged weapon, the guardian’s I’ve seen using it don’t do much if any damage. Just an association I’ve made.
Thief: The problem, as some others have said, is that it offers very little in the categories of team play. That’s not the player’s fault, sure. Hell, the stuff it offers isn’t even that useful. Shadow refuge is a great team skill at times though, as is stealth (dredge fractal). But like scepter guardians I just have this… image of players on thief not contributing a large amount to the group.
Engineer: Yeah no, when I play my engineer I run a grenade/vulnerability build. I tried flamethrower one and didn’t like it as much. It seemed like less damage despite being specced towards it, and then the lack of vulnerability just bleh. I didn’t like it but I definitely see flamethrower as a viable option.
—Commander tags: I had not considered the commander chat. It really is something I always forget. I can respect that.
Why I singled out timewarp: Don’t get me wrong, I think all of the mesmer elites are very useful. That’s just the one I see the most mishaps with. And as I said earlier, I try to clear those up when I can.
Clearing up a few things:
We recruit via gw2lfg and are always clear about how we’re doing our run. The two main points are we’re not skipping monsters and we’re not glitching. That’s the first time these things are mentioned, and they’re mentioned again before we enter the instance. If someone does either of those things, we clarify again that we’re not doing them. It’s usually around this point, around the start of a run, that people argue with us about it (as in, yelling and telling us we’re wrong) or do it anyway. This is also the point that we remove people, around the start of the run.
Unless someone is being extremely — extremely — obnoxious, we won’t remove them in the middle of a dungeon. Almost always the people are removed between dungeon runs (we post that we’re doing multiple). Of course that isn’t 100% of the time, maybe 10~% of people we kick are being ridiculous.
Other than those two major points, we don’t really care what you do. It’s just when you’re doing a ton of those things on the list to the point that we ask you to stop and you continue to do it that we remove you afterwards. That’s it, no biggie. I’m really against people being thrown out of a group midway into a dungeon.
At any point if someone is doing something we/I don’t approve of we/I try to resolve it. For example, timewarp: oh hey, this guy threw time warp on himself, away from the monster. I’ll send him a message asking if he doesn’t mind moving up and throwing it on the rest of the party. If he ignores me, whatever. If he changes his style, great. If he argues with me, well in this case I’m just like whoa, but I’ll at least hear out his side of the argument.
As such I don’t view this as an obstacle course of requirements to join our group. Personally I don’t have expectations of anyone, I just kind of hope they’re not rude.
@Vox: Yeah, it’s hard to not get emotional over some of the events that happened, mostly when people argue. Communication is key is very correct, though.
@Leo: Yeah you’re correct, scaling is harshest on 80. It still hits lower levels, though, and I’m still hesitant over lower level characters because they (probably) don’t have a full set of gear for their level, especially with how quickly one levels in a dungeon (assuming multiple runs of course). Thanks for the scaling info though, looking forward to checking it out.
@Laharl: Sorry for the miscommunication, we don’t kick people mid run over things like that unless they’re either doing it frequently after we’ve asked them not to and they’ve also been doing some other things on that list. The main thing that comes into play on that category is when they do it mid-‘boss’ fight and cause unnecessary deaths (usually their own) or something to that extent.
You are correct that the majority of the time it is more annoying than kickable. I’ll edit the original post to indicate that.
@Dog: No, I know thief doesn’t have that much; it’s just one of those things I expect when I see a thief. Speccing to support has a nasty side effect if you can’t actually support anyone (difficult to support with a ranged party). Stealth is incredibly useful at times. It’s just that I expect a thief to play only one way and that’s usually correct, though not necessarily the fault of the thief so much as the fault of the class.
I should probably clarify that we rarely kick mid-run. That’s probably important. It’s also probably relevant to say that we tend not to unless they’re committing multiple issues.
The biggest thing is when we ask or tell someone not to do something and they either ignore us or argue with us. I do take into account that a lot of things are inexperience and usually — not always but usually — ask them to either do or not do something with an explanation as to why.
We’re harsh when we’ve hit a stage of asking someone not to do something, explaining why and they either ignore us or argue with us.
@Leo: I’m aware that some guild groups do that and some people are afraid of being kicked for a guildie. The very first thing my group said upon joining is that we will never kick anyone for a group member, period. However I recognize that that is just my particular group. We’ve never had an issue where someone entered and refused to leave, and I try very hard to keep my group from removing people before the run is over. It really takes a lot to convince me otherwise; the player(s) in question have to not only be holding us back, they have to either be actively sabotaging our run or asserting that they are very much a hindrance beyond being not very good (as in, making fights so much harder, by disrupting gameplay mechanics or additional aggro, that we can’t win them).
This screams selfish because you are willingly gimping the group. And yes, you are gimping the group even if you’re at or above the level for a dungeon: scaling is pretty harsh. We’re ok with newer players but what we’re not ok with is a person joining a group and slowing us down so he can level up a character. You’re wasting everyone’s time. Even if your gear is perfectly up to date with your current level so that you’re not hit very harshly by the scale down system then you still don’t have full traits. Before the waypoint adjustment in dungeons I was somewhat ok with players swapping to another character for the boss but I now considered that unacceptable as well as you are forcing the team to either stay out of combat until you arrive for the fight or the group doesn’t wait and you walk through the entire dungeon, contributing 0%.
It goes without saying that entering on a character lower than the dungeon’s level cap is also unacceptable. You deserve to be kicked if you’re leeching.
Really, if you want exp then go out and do world exploration; you do not have the right to kitten a group because you want some exp.
—Splitting up mobs
Tough category because it’s highly subjective. Splitting up mobs really depends upon the situation. However, there are plenty of times when it’s beneficial to have several mobs clustered together; knocking them around in these situations slows down a dungeon quite a bit. Just think about it a bit before you mindlessly scatter monsters all over the place.
Overall, realize you’re in a group setting with real people and ask yourself if you would appreciate someone else doing the things you are. That’s all I ask.
—Complaining about class/group setup
This is exceptionally annoying. For one, there are very few things that are class exclusive. I will accept that some classes can do a few things better than others but that often requires a tight trait specialization. As for two: you’re doing it wrong if you need or think you need a class or build to run a dungeon. It certainly isn’t ideal to run something like five thieves or five necros but yes, those classes can win most paths. Arah path 4 is currently the only exception I have; really, this game was very well designed and you can do anything in any group as any spec, that being said…
The lesser things:
—Ranged attacks, Scepter Guardians, Pistol Thieves, Rangers, Rifle Warriors, Thieves
This is a large category but mostly the problem here is ranged attacks. Ranged attacks are not ideal in almost every situation; ranged attacks do less damage and generally have less synergy with other players. Scepter guardians, Rifle Warriors, Pistol Thieves and Rangers are the largest offenders: these builds/weapons offer very little to group situations and strike me as either selfish (the character putting their well being above the groups), lazy, unskilled (can’t dodge effectively) or all of the above. When I see someone playing primarily with ranged attacks it sets off a red flag.
Rangers and Thieves, though… I’ve had a high amount (close to 90%) of bad experiences with people that play these classes. I’ve only seen one — one — ranger use one of their melee alternatives (I want to emphasize this: I’ve run about 6 paths daily since mid September. That’s a lot of dungeons and a lot of rangers). Often I don’t see a ranger contribute in any meaningful way to a group. For example, there is a healing field that rangers have: It’s incredible and I never see it. Why? I just don’t get it. As for thief, well, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one that has been specced towards anything close to support. When I say support I mean ANYTHING that assists the group aside from damage: really, just play warrior or something if that’s all you want to do. There isn’t a whole lot there, sure, but there are things and I never — literally never — have seen a thief build towards them or even have them on the side. So, when I see a thief, I have a mental red flag about the player.
—Hounds of Motherkittening Balthazar
That’s the official name, by the way; the devs just couldn’t fit the whole thing in. This is a category I’d like to put higher up but it serves more as a red flag about player skill level and that’s not something I necessarily wanted to touch in this. I also was tempted to say racial elites or racial skills in general but some have use, and some classes just don’t have much in the form of elites, however, when I see a warrior or a mesmer use Hounds of Balthazar there is a serious problem.
Specifically: the recast is fairly high (four minutes), the duration is low (30 seconds) and summoned pets/minions tend to not last very long in dungeon fights. If they had a higher duration, a lower recast, or could live for their full duration then I could see an argument being made about their use towards additional damage but they just won’t accomplish anything in a dungeon setting.
Just a few things on it: elites, like utility skills, are or can be situational. You don’t have to equip a skill that you’ll want to use every time it’s up, necessarily. There are plenty of situational elite’s that are well worth using if the situation arises (summoning warbanner on a fallen ally rather than using it at the start of the fight for buffs or using a timewarp to quickly raise some downed team members rather than for pure damage as a few examples). Beyond that class elites are almost always better, more efficient, or offer something pretty cool. If you’re using something like Hounds of Balthazar in a dungeon I would suggest checking out your class forums and asking about your class elites and their uses. As for just standard world exploration I could see a case made for hounds if you wanted a meat shield or something, but the recast is high and they don’t last long. Just not something useful in dungeons.
—Entering the instance
I hesitate to say “if you’re not the party leader don’t enter the instance,” because there isn’t exactly a party leader. This is more aimed at people who join random groups; if you’re joining a group then you’re not the one that’s supposed to enter the instance. It’s not a serious infraction; my group always asks that the person exit the instance so our designated group leader can open up one.
—Commander tags
Please take them off as they do nothing but annoy everyone else.
—Joining on a character lower than 80 when you have one or multiple 80s
—Consistently taking time to ping drops during combat
Please save it for the end of the run. Most of the time people don’t care about your yellows and you’re wasting time sitting in your inventory/chatlog. I’m ok with discussing drops at the end of a run, because, you know, we’re not fighting something then.
—Consistently typing during fights
Keep your typing to a minimum and focus on fighting the monsters. Please. If you’re typing it better be relevant to whatever you’re fighting at the time.
—Misusing Timewarp
Alright, sure, I can accept that hitting everyone with timewarp isn’t necessarily easy or even possible some times. Please don’t throw it down on yourself, especially if the maximum range is outside of melee range of whatever we happen to be fighting at the moment.
—Going afk
kitten happens and we get that. Afking in a dungeon slows everyone down so please try to take care of your business outside of dungeons or between paths if you can help it. At the very least announce you’re going afk. If you’re holding us up and haven’t said anything, we kick you. This isn’t exclusive to non-guildies.
—Not following targeting
In a word this category is about focus. Certain encounters contain mobs that are more of a threat than others. An example of this is A.C. path 2, Detha’s path: waves of ghosts spawn to attack Detha as she prepares some cannons. In scenario’s like this a friend of mine calls target on specific mobs so that we have some focus and can take down more dangerous monsters first. What I see happen very often is that people will not follow targeting which causes fights to take longer and big threats to deal more damage.
Something else I see occur to a lesser extent is that another player will call target on a different monster than the one my group has targeted. If you’re joining a partially premade group then just don’t interfere with targeting because it’s not your group. You can disagree or say something else is more of a threat but that is absolutely a discussion that does not need to take place during combat. If you’re just a full pickup group and you want to take use of the feature then try to designate one person to call out targets or step up and announce that you will.
—Not having access to the area
Don’t join a group if you’re not ready to enter. Especially don’t join a group and expect them to wait for you to walk your character across a few maps to get to the one we’re on.
—Fake Politeness
If you’re joining a group and offer to do something then you’d better kitten well do it when the group asks. For example: don’t join on a low level character, offer to switch to an 80 and then not do it when the group asks! We don’t care that you’re leveling a new character! You offered to do it and if you didn’t want to then just don’t say anything.
—Glitching
This is more of a personal preference I suppose but I don’t see the necessity or purpose towards glitching outside of a very limited set of scenarios, such as the game legitimately breaking and blocking progress because it broke (Arah path 1 a few months ago as an example). If it’s your group I don’t mind if you cheat but I expect that all players in a group are consistent with the group’s choice. It bothers me when a player asks if we’re doing x glitch after my group has made it clear several times that we are not doing any glitching. The worst is when a player asks why not after we’ve said no. That’s around the point where I want to slap the person’s hands away from the keyboard and tell them to go sit in the corner. . If this was a hard game or if half the content was broken (I’m looking at you Final Fantasy 11) and that was literally the only way to beat a boss, sure. GW2 is fun and easy though. Basically, if you think you have to glitch to beat this game then, sorry, there’s something wrong with your play style.
—Moving crystals away from players during the Jade Maw fractal
I get why people move crystals to the one corner. It’s not a bad move, sure. What bothers me is when people take a crystal off of another player that isn’t in a corner and then move that crystal to the corner. If you insist on moving crystals to a safe area please leave at least one near anyone who isn’t in that corner.
(edited by Luciusbrimstone.7925)
This is an unedited post that I spent a small amount of time writing about a month ago. It’s redundant and needed work but I don’t have the time to commit to it right now. I felt bad in not posting it because I believe there’s important information in here for the people that are always kittening “I got kicked from this group for no reason!” Fyi, there’s always a reason, and this is the large majority of reasons my group used to kick TONS of people. Anyway, the post:
Dungeon Etiquette: Attitude and Behavior
Primarily this post is aimed at people who are joining a group for a dungeon, specifically explaining why my group is kicking and blocking large amounts of people from participating with us. Ideally I would hope that some of these people see this post, understand why they’ve been removed and improve. For reference my group, formed from players within my guild, typically only has three static members; usually, but not always, we fill the last two slots with people from gw2lfg.com. I understand the risk of inviting random players for dungeons but as my small team of three can clear most paths without assistance we don’t typically have issues inviting two more for some extra damage.
However, as of late, I’ve noticed a massive influx in selfish and idiotic behavior. I would like to clarify that I’m not referencing new or inexperienced players, but rather players that have multiple 80s. We’re ok with new players joining and trying to learn how to play more effectively in a dungeon environment, really. We’re willing to help people learn to play the game. This post isn’t about skill or gear; it’s about specific behaviors and attitudes.
So let’s discuss unacceptable behavior in a group:
—Joining and immediately leaving
—Arguing about how the dungeon is being run
—Wearing magic find gear
—Consistently not raising
—Consistently raising dead players/npcs over downed players
—Consistently taking time to ping drops during combat
—Consistently typing during fights
—Misusing timewarp
—Going afk
—Not having access to the area
—Not following targeting
—Fake Politeness
—Glitching
—Moving crystals away from players during the Jade Maw fractal
—Complaining about class/group setup
And some lesser things:
—Ranged attacks, Scepter Guardians, Pistol Thieves, Rangers, Rifle Warriors, Thieves
—Hounds of Motherkittening Balthazar
—Entering the instance
—Commander tags
—Joining on a character lower than 80 when you have one or multiple 80s
—Splitting up mobs
Back to the top, with explanation this time:
—Joining and immediately leaving
(immediately in this case is any time before the path has started)
I don’t care why you left the group. Maybe you don’t like certain classes or maybe you don’t want to play with lower leveled characters. Just don’t bother joining groups if you’re looking for a particular setup: make your own group and be clear about your class/level expectations. If you honestly had to leave for outside reasons, yeah, that’s fine. Just say that and we won’t hate you.
We will, however, hate you if you decide you don’t want to wait long enough to find a fifth member, especially if you say you’re going to try to your luck with another group.
—Arguing about how the dungeon is being run
Some groups can be democracies but most are not. Most don’t give a kitten about how you want to run the dungeon and have their own plans for doing things, so if you’re joining random groups then you’d better be prepared to play the way they want to. If there is some ambiguity, like a gw2lfg.com post doesn’t say how the run is being done, then ask. You’re not the only person in the group and if you joined the group then accept that it’s not your group. You don’t get to make the calls.
Additionally, don’t assume anything. I’ve seen way too many people run ahead of us and then skip groups of monsters. If you’re not one of the individuals that initiated the group then you stay behind everyone else.
—Wearing magic find gear
If you’re wearing magic find then you’re hurting the group to help yourself, and only helping yourself to a marginal degree. You are literally giving up the major stat on a piece of gear, or a rune/sigil slot, for the magic find and are absolutely contributing less than your potential.
At the moment I’m not sure exactly how magic find scales but I suspect it doesn’t scale well. Given scaling, there are only a few dungeons where wearing magic find would be useful (unscaled), and honestly, if you’re wearing magic find in arah then you’re making a huge mistake.
—Consistently not raising
This is absolutely obnoxious and there is no excuse. If you didn’t notice then you’re not paying attention. Letting people full die is unacceptable.
—Consistently raising dead players/npcs over downed players
There is no reason to do this. Don’t do it.
(edited by Luciusbrimstone.7925)
I’ve gotten the staff from the tribal set once or twice while throwing exotics in the mystic forge, so there’s always that, too.
Weird that you can’t buy it off of the tp, since I’ve sold the staff skin on it before. Maybe it’s under another name? If you can’t buy it because none are available, try a buy order.
For the most part I really like what you guys have done with the daily overhaul and I wanted to say good job on that. I enjoy the new categories, for the most part. Would still like to see wvw stuff dropped from the main category but I’m not against a wvw section of dailies. That being said, are there plans to update the pvp dailies in a similar manner? It seems like keg brawl achievements would be better suited there.
But yeah no, I’m content, good work.
@Catisa: I do appreciate your feedback, however rudely you decided to include it. You’re correct that it doesn’t directly say THIS IS A PVE CATEGORY. It just so happens that the categories are heavily PvE influenced, as are (arguably) the rewards. It’s not that much of a stretch, but you’re not wrong.
I’d like to adjust my initial statement to: if we have to have WvW things, could it be something other than player kills? Capturing supply camps, killing or escorting dolyaks, killing npcs such as guards or the npcs at supply camps.. stuff like that.
Just something that is potentially available at all times and not dependent upon either my team or the enemy team being present.
Monthly doesn’t bother me nearly as much because it’s something I can work at over the course of a few weeks so I don’t feel pressured when WvW is going south for my server.
I understand that there are choices towards achieving the daily reward chest but I’m also an achievement kitten. If dailies were something like a 5 achievement point cap per day, as opposed to getting a point for every category regardless of whether or not you’ve already finished progress towards the chest, yeah, I would be fine with it. There are just rewards past that chest and I’d like to accomplish them. I’d just like it a lot more if world vs world wasn’t a part of that in the current system.
If there was a category for world vs world, separating player vs environment from player vs player, then it also wouldn’t bother me. The meshing does.
20 fire for fire aura on signets, 10 in earth for protect on aura, 10 in air for fury/swiftness on aura, 30 water if you want to share the aura with everyone.
I play a glass cannon geared elementalist with daggers and those traits. The protect makes a huge difference and allows me to soak up damage if I need to.
The only downside is going full on signets for skills, but it’s a small price for near constant protect and the extra damage I deal thanks to a berserker setup.
The problem with your argument is that you’re not forced to sit in one attunement. The class was designed with the idea of being able to switch elements as the need arises and I think air is very useful as a utility attunement for gaining speed and closing gaps. D/D’s lightning attunement is incredibly useful in pve and pvp for that reason. You swap to it, get to the target, knock them down, then switch off to something else.
They’re not designed to be standalone.
As for being a high damage weapon: lightning on scepter is very powerful. Fire only gives might if you’re traited for it and that trait, in my opinion, isn’t very good because it not only is deep in the trait tree but also requires that you remain on fire the majority of the time for the trait to be useful.
If you want to stay in lightning and maintain fury I suggest going 20 points into fire for the trait that causes signets to give you a fire aura on use. That ability combined with Zephyr boon will, if you use full signets, probably give you a full uptime on fury during combat. Of course the tradeoff is that you have to equip signets and use them but I think it’s worth it if you also have ten points in earth for the aura’s give protect trait.
My opinion is that no class should full time a ranged weapon if they can help it. There isn’t much synergy and they don’t do as much damage as melee alternatives. Rangers do have melee weapons.
It is absolutely reasonable of you to ask your friends to stand closer together for higher synergy but I’m not sure that what you’re currently doing is necessarily worthwhile. Ranged attacks still combo off of the fields and although some of the melee-oriented combos are useful, I’m not sure that it’s worth moving up just for that. Definitely worth it for the extra damage they would do, though. Especially if you have a guardian giving constant protect.
If you want to buff your team you can try some auramancer (30 water for giving auras to team, 20 in fire so you can use signets to give additional auras) and go for protect (10 earth) fury+swiftness (10 air).
Please remove WvW from PvE daily and monthly achievements. I don’t like the idea of being coerced into doing a player vs player event that I don’t particularly care for if I want to earn some rewards in the player vs environment area.
I’d like to suggest that these, for the most part, be moved from soulbound to accountbound, with exception to the Master tools or anything special like them.
Mostly, I don’t see a benefit to normal tools being soulbound over accountbound when the harvested items and money to buy the tools can easily be traded between characters of the same account via the bank. If there is a reason as to why they are soulbound then I’d be interested in hearing it.
Thanks.