Guild Wars 2

I’m in a similar situation having come back from a 3 year break.

Been running HOT first zones chasing events and hero points using scepter/dagger (I’m mostly a D/D boy since beta) with earth/water/arcane – basically the old bunker build adjusted for condi negation and regeneration uptime. Swapping to staff for the big boss fights. Swapping in a stacking weapon helps too.

I’m still in my old wvw gear so a mix of Soldiers and Berserkers so far it’s handling okay. DPS isn’t interstellar but I prefer more resilience than burst due to most encounters involving adds > 3.

Thank you for the run-down. I’ve been away for 3 (?) years and that’s a good reference source.

Thank you man, my BattlePing sub is ending soon, will give WTFast a try.

Wow, away for 3 years, come back, much has changed, except Ele still being beat on? 3 years of no attunement dancing, 3 years of no dreading patch notes, 3 years of missing the class I’ve loved the most. I hope it’s gonna be worth playing again.

EDIT…

We got off-hand war-horn? We’re getting main-hand sword? We have access to shouts? Have they fixed D/D yet? Why are Zelhyn’s posts still pinned at the top?

1. Eve Online – from lowsec smallscale pirate activities to full-blown nullsec turfwars, not as twitchy but took some skill, awareness and massive planning.

2. GW2 – I played from beta till just before HoT dropped but quit due to Ele disgruntlement and RL. The most fun I’ve ever had, the most fun class I’ve ever played. Downloading the client again now and looking forward to playing again.

3. LOTRO – It’s old and dated but for the time I played it I enjoyed PVP.

4. ESO – I’m done with ESO after 8 months, at the core it’s a good game but the development team are idiots. In the time I’ve played they’ve altered class mechanics, skill mechanics, weapon mechanics and gear mechanics. My biggest issue is the degradation of client and server performance. 20v20 in Cyrodiil is a lag-fest, boot from client, crash fiasco.

AdamHughes.4306:

I get similar issues, but I’m based in China.
With the use of tunnel software, it becomes absolutely fine (have used both battle ping, and now use WTFast). Steady 200 ping.
Perhaps get a free trial and see if that helps at all.

Of course, I know people report similar experiences from even in the US on these forums, but that’s what works for me.

May I ask why you switched to WTFast?

I’ve been using BattlePing for a couple of years now but I’m having a really bad experience in ESO and like the OP would like to come back to GW2.

I’m playing from South Africa to EU, did you find WTFast to be more reliable?

This is terrible to hear. It’s freaking bad in ESO and I’m considering coming back to GW2 after a forced hiatus back before HoT dropped. In era of cloud computing I guess F2P no longer covers the cost of running decent servers.

sigh if only I didn’t miss my Ele so much, am I running on nostalgia here (GW2 client downloading as I type this, so fed-up with ESO).

DC’d four times on reset night, usually I’ll dc once every three days, many guildies are having similar issues. Desolation [EU] here.

Here’s a cheap balanced build template you can try out before giving up on D/D or deciding to upgrade the gear if you like it.

Cheap because there is no laurel or massive gold investment for ascended or celestial gear to try it out.

Balanced because it covers the majority of the bases while keeping stats competitive yet having enough room for tweaking.

Ten trait points free for you to put where you want or where you feel you need them. Sigils left open for user preference apart from a stacking weapon.

16000 HP, 2478 Armor, 440 Healing power
2793 Attack (3043 with full bloodlust), 30% crit. chance, 60% crit. damage
50% Boon duration.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEEQJAoYhEmgbyx5gjDAkHwcCLiCPUUkzMA-jUzA4uASQQyeApPl1EYEruBp8GxmRW1LY6zkqUB0rR2nUEtahAktFA-w

Yeah I’m reserving judgement until we have some data on the duration and cooldowns. Seems very situational for an elite skill though. Quickness stomps ftw.

I totally agree with the “title” change.

As much as we hate it, Elementalists are the epitome of a balanced class taking into account that every decision we make regarding gear and trait selection have distinct positives and negatives.

I haven’t stayed current on the proposed changes in this thread so won’t comment on them.

Here’s an entry level balanced D/D build template I put together for a few people starting to play D/D and for people who don’t want to invest huge amounts of gold or laurels.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEEQJAoYhEmgbyx5wjDAkHuAAAiCPUUkzMA-jUzA4uASQQyeApPl1EYEruBp8GxmRW1LY6zkqUB0rR2nUEtahAktFA-w

Here are the objective’s I aimed for with this build template

Affordable for most in terms of gold cost and time invest so that means…
No Ascended items
No Travellers, Divinity, Scholars or Melandru runes
No Celestial armour

Flexible trait allocation covering the basic requirements but allowing personal customisation.

Balanced offensively and defensively, you choose what to tweak, I consider balanced to be the following:

16000 HP – enough for those without applied fortitude, gives room for shaving if going more offensive.

2500 Armour – Maintain a good balance of effective HP, give decent passive mitigation.

400 Healing power – Further improves effective HP, 500 being the goal but not attainable without Ascended.

50% Boon duration – enough said.

30% crit chance before fury, minimum of 50% crit damage.

2800 Attack rating before bloodlust and might stacking.

Minimal dependency on top tier food to keep running costs as low as possible.

You can also use the lower tier stacking sigil if you don’t want to drop 7G on the superior version.

Empty traits are places where you can choose which you prefer. Plus you have ten points to play around with, ten more into air for offense, ten more into arcana for evasive arcana, ten into earth for flexibility in terms of defense or offense.

Can’t really contribute regarding PVE but I notice this time and again in WvW – mobs will aggro me while running past and completely ignore the 3k+ armoured guards and warriors running next to me.

No skills used to pull aggro, actively avoiding proximity pulls on my part yet they home in on me like … insert your favourite phrase here.

Doesn’t sound like Deso at all, then again the last few weeks have been strange, although we’ve helped two people get world completion in the last three weeks. If you need those POI’s give someone from EXG a shout and we’ll see what we can do for you.

Oh and Hai Shino, it’s magic!

It doesn’t synergise with the name or the concept of earth attunement so let’s look at why we use lightning flash with churning earth…

1) The cast time is too long
2) The ease of avoiding the damage by simply walking or dodging on the count of three

How to make it more reliable without requiring a teleport?

1) Reverting it to a charged skill meaning the enemy no longer counts to three and dodges, power and effects called based on charge duration.

2) Cripple is insufficient cc for this skill, remove the bleed stacks and replace it with
2a) Instant 1 second cripple on trigger, ticking at 0, 1, 2 seconds
2b) Apply a 1 second immobilize at 1.5 second mark
2c) Apply a daze, stun or knockdown on final burst at 3 second mark

The reason for instating cc ticks at those intervals is to punish someone who stays in the AOE. You only get the strong CC components for fully charging and successfully hitting opponents.

The numbers and tick intervals can be tweaked for balance but the underlying concept is to add tools to make avoidance more difficult and to punish targets who don’t react in a timely fashion.

Bleed damage is useless, we don’t run condition builds, and won’t until there are drastic changes made to the class.

I think you (ElexOrieN) entirely missed the point of this topic, and that coming from me, one bitter, kittened off and disappointed Ele main.

I agree OP, we look fantastic in action, and I would sacrifice my Greater Elemental to the gods of weapon creation for actual whips as dual weapons!

Elementalist [Buff]
Warrior [Nerf]

All [Fix]

For what it’s worth I really and I mean really liked your idea!

I play both, guess I have double good karma coming to me in my next life.

If there’s even one veil in this video I’m not watching it… just kid ink!

It’s the same order with condition removal. you want stability gone first, I want immobilize gone first too.

Whichever solution (if any) they apply to boon removal/corruption needs to be applied to condition removal/conversion.

I wouldn’t mind a test for a week to see what increasing the cap from 5 -10 would accomplish and how badly it would affect the server performance. Surely there must be another way to reduce server side calculations?

Everyone thought culling would never be fixed but look at the magic that Habib did.

The limit for sPVP makes sense due to the fixed nature and limited amount of players on a map but makes absolutely no sense when facing a zerg in WvW, especially if you’re the smaller group and have the skill to beat them.

You forgot the ICD added to Evasive Arcana procs and changes to One With Air in that list as well Zen.

Aaaahhhh I don’t want to remember, shut it offff!

Some times all you need to do is ask in map chat. We’ve specifically helped many people get POI’s that they’ve needed for world completion, and you know what? It actually feels good to help someone else out.

Granted certain POI’s may be difficult to get due to certain factors, but never be afraid to ask, you don’t even have to physically say anything, just type a few words, try your luck.

losbananas.8674:

MarzAttakz.9608:

If you can’t beat them, join them, quite simple really! Maybe it’s time you pve’ers actually did something for the server you’re playing on.

Yes, because I’m so thankfull of bonusses that I don’t care about.

Thx thx thx for providing me with something that i neither need or want.
Also, don’t pretend you play WvW to give your server bonusses. You do it because you derive fun from it. So the bonusses are more like an ‘accident de parcours’ then something you strive to achieve.

And when you accidentaly activate a bonus, you deserve no thx for that. If you were to WvW strictly to give bonusses then you would get my thx. But let’s face it, that’s not why you WvW, now is it?

And what exactly do PVE players bring to anybody but themselves?

We (the WvW community) are forced to play what we do not enjoy – simply to gear ourselves up. We have the worst drop rate and income, the highest running cost for repairs, upgrades and foods, and the least amount of reciprocity from other players and the developers themselves. And the buffs granted to a server are far more beneficial to the PVE community as a whole.

Boycott the content if you like, miss out on your precious achievement points, I honestly do not care.

hannah mee.7925:

Yeah, I purchased a game solely so I could contribute to a server’s WvW progression. That’s what I did. Yup.

Except by entering the Edge of the Mists you’ll be contributing absolutely nothing to the score of your server, you may perhaps provide some extra supply.

I love how you all throw your toys out your cots – why don’t you try it out, you may actually find you enjoy it, if not, you lose out on some achievement points and carry on as normal two weeks later.

EDIT…

With them introducing the new mechanic of the map being a pool of all players from a specific colour the chances of you being ganked or griefed are much lower than on the other WvW maps.

It should be as easy as finding an overflow with a decent sized zerg and following the commander tag around, not too different from Champ farming. Yes you’ll lose some fights and have to pay for repairs, but you’ll also win some fights and earn loot, world xp, ranks and achievement points.

kitten ! It’s actually a pretty sweet idea! As long as I and my team still appear as the same classes to each other I’d be happy with this.

If you can’t beat them, join them, quite simple really! Maybe it’s time you pve’ers actually did something for the server you’re playing on.

Atherakhia.4086:

Mosquito? Most deadly animal the world over…

Only in the Third World – I know I live here.

Atherakhia.4086:

Fish? Masters of their domain and specialized killing machines?

Shark meet Tuna … omnomnomnom.

Atherakhia.4086:

You guys suck at this game…

Indeed we do.

Warrior = Rhino
Thick hide, scary when moving, hurts when it connects, dumb as a brick.

Guardian = Badger or Tortoise
Bunkers up, protects themselves, slow moving. The badger version can hurt you.

Necro = Hyena
Dirty, smelly, carrion loving abomination, slow to move but if bitten it’s over for you.

Ranger = Spitting Cobra
Spit from range, strike close up or flee, some die easy, some kill you.

Thief = Viper or Adder
Sneaky, repulsive, only see it when it strikes then game over for you. Only takes some balls to crush it under your heel if it doesn’t slither away super quick.

Engineer = Hydra
Too many heads, doing too many things, cut one off another grows back.

Mesmer = Amazonian Army Ant
There’s never one, left unchecked leaves a swath of destruction. Bring napalm.

Elementalist = Mosquito
Annoying buzzing sound, itchy bite, swat it once and it’s dead.

Q: With the massive outcry against the design philosophy behind SkyHammer, do you think it was prudent for the team responsible for EotM to follow a similar philosophy.

Q: Taking into account the plethora of push/pull/knockback/blow out skills and the necessity of stability in the majority of WvW encounters do you think EotM will contribute anything meaningful to the disparity of class composition in WvW. In short two guardians per party to counter today’s meta doesn’t look like it will be changing any time soon.

Overkillengine.6084:

While I am tempted to kvetch like everyone else on the low number of class balance changes, I am also mindful that the deceptively short section about Runes and Sigils getting a review on top of individual cool-downs is actually a freaking potentially huge amount of work done if they actually went through them all to make them more equitable.

And Runes and Sigils do drastically affect class and build balance.

So I’ll wait and see how that turns out before complaining.

I agree it is a massive amount of work, but would like to counter that by asking, would that time and effort not be better spent fixing classes first?

It seems to me they are hell bent on avoiding the underlying issues and are doing anything else to make it appear that they are doing something. Since everyone has access to the same runes and sigils surely it would not alter balance in such a drastic fashion.

I’ve only heard someone say a class is OP because of their runes and sigils when talking Melandru + Lemongrass + Dogged March, Perplexity insert condi class and Thieves running Lyassa.

Furthermore with the massive and sweeping changes to gear, runes and sigils how can they expect to accurately monitor class balance when any changes they make are going to be buried under new data monitoring the effects of changes to gear, runes and sigils?

The entire balance team’s track record, I’m sorry to say, screams inexperience and inability to deal with the scope of the task at hand. Perhaps they need more members, perhaps they need to be replaced, but something needs to be done for the good and future of this game.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

Repair every professions mechanics that have not worked properly for months.

Clear transparency with where this is all going. I can’t tell what the pvp in this game is hoping to achieve or make of itself. It is casual, is it competitive?, is balanced around team or individual?, against safe play or dynamic play?

Quit the nerfs where the reasons given for why don’t make sense or are simply not true.

Quit talking about skills being clear and visible and allowing for counter play when some professions skills have no posture, animation or cue. Laws are only laws when they apply to everyone. Either everyone has animations/postures/cues..or none of us do and we all have skill bars.

Make good on statements. “we’ll be working on reducing particle before years end.” There is currently more particle currently with all the new finishers added each update.

Change camera angles so the camera is not behind a tree or curtain. Remove environment if need be.

Forget creative design evolution if there is no feedback about was taken from all of this and what is going to be implemented. I have politicians for this in my life, I don’t need it from video’s game I play to pass time.

If you love time gating so much, time gate forums. People can post one thing every 24 hours. Look carefully about what you like to comment on, and what you feel others have commented enough. It removes bickering, asinine knee jerk comments where someone got spanked and now wants to soap box. Is it censorship? perhaps..but censorship for the best.

Make yourself more visible in game. You created it. You should enjoy your work. Nothing gives better perspective than being in it. I can imagine your busy, really busy. I think it would give more confidence to the community to line up in soloQ, or be matched in tpvp or just even see an a-net insignia running round hotjoin.

Well said!

/clap
/cheer

Brilliant idea!

Only caveat I can think of are late night border-hopping teams granting outmanned to the one or two scouts left behind hence refreshing all siege by leaving the map.

Really sorry to hear that guys.

Be strong for him, for the times he couldn’t. Have the courage to fight the battles he lost, leading him down that path.

My condolences to his family, both in game and in the real world.

The fact that even Mr DiogoSilva is getting ticked off is cause for alarm…

All WAS Vain.

style.6173:

@OP: You have inspired the use of a new phrase. L2R. That stands for learn to read. I’ll paste the important piece below to help. Also, why does everyone always cry about leaving the game. Either do it or don’t, but do not post here about it.

“Most of these notes are simply a summary of what was discussed in the previous Ready Up stream, with a few tweaks based on feedback. This list of changes does not encompass all changes that will occur in the next feature build. We’ve got quite a few more things coming, but are unable to talk about them at this time. Soon.”

You know what, here’s one for you L2D – Learn to Discern.

Firstly why bother posting a summary of the ReadyUp with a minor amendment here or there?

Secondly many of us are sick and tired of hearing about these mythical changes that are coming.

Thirdly, they have proven time and again since beta that they are unable to do anything constructive for this class.

So how about you learn to discern in return.

Soon© may have worked for CCP dev’s because they actually delivered.
Too Little Too Late© would be appropriate for the current team.

Ulion.5476:

Xaylin.1860:

I partly agree on this one. I really like the Air and the Earth Signet. Water and Fire on the other hand are just aweful. The Chill is rather redundant when having the choice of getting an Immobilize. Elementalists also don’t need even more burn. Two ideas I had:

Signet of Water
Active
Create a Waterfield for 3s which also provides 1s Regeneration per pulse.
While there already are enough Waterfields or sources of Regeneration all of them are either tied to the water attunment itself or the traitline. The Signet would offer recovery outside of those and probably open up some trait choices.

Signet of Fire
Active
Gain 5 stacks of Might for 5s and cause Weakness to nearby foes for 5s (240 Radius).
A short damage boost and another way to mitigate damage. It would also provide another cover-up condition for hybrid/condition Elementalists.

Signet of water needs a change to make it reflect more on the healing aspect of water. Like active effect 10s regen or 3s waterfield. Otherwise the signet should be rename to Signet of Ice and change the passive to something like applies vulnerability to attackers.

A water field would get my vote unless they reverted cleansing water.

I hate the fact that the majority of our field types besides fire are limited to staff, while the majority of our blast finishers are limited to dagger/scepter, I’m not counting evasive arcana due to many no longer running it.

Many in guild have been issues lately (last 3 weeks) but most noticeable the last two weeks.

We’re an international guild, although most are based in Europe, with a spread from West to East Europe, a few players from NA continent and a few players from Africa.

I’m stating our composition because people from all the different locations are experiencing what you’ve described. We don’t all use the same ISP.

Rank 126 on my main, Rank 90 on secondary, Rank 50 – 75 on another two characters – Not a single ascended drop. Guild mate has had 5 drop in three weeks.

I’m really sick and tired of this discussion. Nobody likes nerfs, every other class is staunchly defending their mobility skills, I totally understand. I like the freedom it gives you as a player.

But can anyone objectively (even putting aside the myriad of issues facing Ele’s) say it is fair that ONE SKILL was treated this way?

Seriously, all I and many of us are asking for is consistency and fair treatment. Is it really too much to ask for?

Adding that my feelings regarding the company mirror those stated by the OP for similar reasons.

You already have my money, so whether I or others stop playing it matters not, however, you no longer have my trust, loyalty or faith and I would be extremely hesitant to purchase anything developed in the future.

It saddens me, that as one of your most eager players when the beta dates drew closer, one of your most excited customers when beta started and one of your most vocal supporters at launch, I no longer think you have the ability or objectivity to do what’s best for your players.

Axialbloom.8109:

Why did you make everything the ele has counterable by moving or dodging?

Because apparently …

Swagg.9236:

The only thing that cripples the Elementalist is bad operators.

How do you propose we keep a target locked down for all these delayed skills or does everything become ground targeted?

Alasteir.7031:

For the people replying on this forum.

con·struc·tive
adjective
1.
serving a useful purpose; tending to build up.
“constructive criticism”
synonyms: useful, helpful, productive, positive, encouraging

I respect your intentions by posting that, however the ambivalence and antipathy towards the respective teams are not without reason. Frankly the listed changes to all classes are marginal at best, especially considering the time frame.

My own antipathy has stemmed from the mistreatment of the Elementalist class I love so much. Why waste our breaths being respectful when constructive feedback threads are primarily ignored.

Link’s provided below to further illustrate:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/1106-suggestions-pre-patch-0-were-ok/first

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/December-10th-Elementalist-changes/first

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Diamond-Skin-Reloaded/

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Focus-Make-some-noise/

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Powerful-Aura-1/

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/PvP-ELE-tism-Balancing-The-Elementalist/first

We have said more than enough. I know of no other game with such passionate players who provide amazing feedback and ideas only to be continually ignored, a disturbing trend shown in practically every single sub-forum to date.

With regards to the Elementalist changes, in my opinion they are inadequate to address the pathetic base survivability that is hamstringing the class.

I’m going to say what I said in your Necro thread Swagg, you’re further crippling a class that’s already crippled by delayed skills. Until hard CC lasts longer than the multiple delays you’re proposing you’re flogging a dead horse.

Again 10/10 for effort though!

Karl McLain.5604:

Profession Changes

Elementalist:
Our changes for the elementalist focus on increasing sustain while maintaining the delicate balance between damage and durability. We achieved this by adding more defensive effects to a few main-hand weapon sets.

• Signet of Restoration: Removed the split on this skill so that the signet passive heal amount will be increased in PvP to match the current PvE amount.
• Armor of Earth: Reduced recharge from 90 seconds to 75 seconds.
• Water Trident: Added 3 seconds of regeneration to up to 5 allies in the radius.
• Burning Speed: This ability now evades attacks.
• Frozen Burst: This ability is now a blast finisher.

“Thank You More Please?”

Keyword being “delicate” in your post, precarious is another that comes to mind. Balance doesn’t objectively belong in that sentence at all. I’m sorry to say a band aid is insufficient when attempting to staunch a critical wound…

CrimsonNeonite.1048:

@Marz PVE/wvw Commander over here mate..

We all know you’re a special case Rubio

The Starks also said Winter was coming, look where it got them.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Hey Anet, this guy has connectivity issues, could you please turn WvW off for every other player.

no one wants to play if this one guy has problems.

Until the problem is yours, like many people on different continents are experiencing.

FrouFrou.4958:

Kaos.9162:

Look at it this way, Victory, at least for two weeks we get to take it out on the poor PvE players who are just there for the living story

Luls ‘n giggles will be had. Prepare for the amusing party joins: Why did you kill me???? Plorks let me be, I’m here for the LS not PvP!

OHAI U!

On Topic …

PVE Commander meet WvW Commander … the tears are going to flow!

Everything but the hidden meaning is vain.