Guild Wars 2

Wave and Brilliance are solid skills (Brilliance has huge heal and support potential if you run staff, and I see no reason to run it with anything else), and arcane shield shines most on zerker builds where 3 hits suddenly becomes a lot, because it’s completely independent of your defensive stats, while our piddling base stats mean that zerker can’t use armor of earth as well.
Sadly, they all compete with evasive arcana, since you sort of need the CDR and while elemental surge is really horribly inappropriate for what seems to be intended to be direct damage burst skills, you still sort of have to take it.

Blast and power just aren’t even worth touching unless you’re building for a cheesy 1v1 spec (power will apply ele surge on all five hits, so you can stack burn very well against a single target, and blast is just instant unavoidable (unless predicted somehow) damage on a low cooldown.

Or just add “Conjure skills are now instant” to conjurer.

Then they
1) don’t feel stupidly clunky
2) You don’t get interrupted while weapon swapping
3) You can swap while casting longer skills, which is supposed to be one of our strengths
4) Flame axe, lightning hammer and earth shield suddenly become slightly useful because the survivability/mobility is no longer gated behind a cast time. Imagine actually being able to use conjure skills in a combo

“So cele d/d ele is overperforming, ruining all competition, and generally just OP, but all other ele specs are underperforming and generally suck? Oh, better nerf ele as a whole because people are even trying out other specs than D/D.”

Necromonger.4970:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

The point people keep making, and the one you keep dodging, is that sPvP is not about killing, and especially not about 1v1s.
You can’t take into account long cooldowns, because since sPvP lasts a while they won’t be up for every fight.
You can’t take into account the ability to just try to bunker vs multiple opponents.
Mobility is extremely important beyond combat usefulness, as are skills that exist purely to stall a fight.
None of these things can be balanced around TTK, at all.
Making every class 1v1 viable in different ways would probably make conquest worse in terms of balance, because then you would have thieves with the huge out-of-combat advantage of mobilty, who are also able to 1v1 anyone, and you would remove every bunker spec from viability, because the whole point of those is to stay on point as long as possible without dying.

Killing people is fun, bunkering is not.
WoW has conquest maps as well, for example Arathi Basin, but capping a point is very difficult without actually killing the defenders/attackers.

1) That’s a matter of opinion, and actually just sounds like you don’t like tanks. It’s hard to balance around one person’s opinion. I don’t think stealth is fun (or rather, I think it’s very one-sided fun), but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t exist, because other people obviously do enjoy it.
2) Conquest is not the focus of WoW PvP. GW2 is also, obviously, a different game, and most importantly neither is balanced around TTK, at all.

Nyx.6532:

ebslike.1852:

So in this alternate reality where TKK is perfectly balanced, I guess every class also has the same attack-range? The same mobility? Every PvP match is played on Courtyard (as opposed to maps where killing the other team does not mean an automatic win)?

Since balancing videogames is so easy, could you provide 1 example of a perfectly balanced multiplayer videogame? I can’t think of any, which would mean the people making these videogames are all idiots (since it’s so easy to balance). Hell even MarioKart has a best kart setup and there are waaaaaay less variables then in an MMO like Guild Wars 2.

you haven’t read the discussion i can see
please do and ask again if there is anything you are in doubt off and i will address it as well as i can.

just to answer you shortly on your concern. TTK takes into account any difference on players advantage; ranged vs. melee, speed, etc.

The point people keep making, and the one you keep dodging, is that sPvP is not about killing, and especially not about 1v1s.
You can’t take into account long cooldowns, because since sPvP lasts a while they won’t be up for every fight.
You can’t take into account the ability to just try to bunker vs multiple opponents.
Mobility is extremely important beyond combat usefulness, as are skills that exist purely to stall a fight.
None of these things can be balanced around TTK, at all.
Making every class 1v1 viable in different ways would probably make conquest worse in terms of balance, because then you would have thieves with the huge out-of-combat advantage of mobilty, who are also able to 1v1 anyone, and you would remove every bunker spec from viability, because the whole point of those is to stay on point as long as possible without dying.

Amante.8109:

Charting average TTK among weapons in serious, competitive FPS has been productive in many cases, so I don’t see why you couldn’t do the same along profession or build lines in this game. It would have be impossible in GW1 due to the skill variety, granted, but GW2 is a considerably more… constrained game on a design level.

And make no mistake, the TTK with competitive SPvP builds is kind of absurd right now.

See, the problem there is that in an FPS, there is only one real class, with vastly less variation than any RPG-type game.
You can’t be a bunker or support role, for the most part. There are no invulns or pure stalling skills, there’s no stealth (at least not true stealth), dashes/teleports, or combo fields, much less any real CC or anything approaching it.

@OP, TTK is a whole lot more complicated than you think, especially in a game where everyone can self-heal.
Bunker/bruiser specs in pretty much any game can require more than one person to kill, regardless of skill level, especially sustain-based ones, not to mention the whole fact that many attacks may or may not hit, depending on the surroundings, LoS, etc.
On top of all of that, this is not a 1v1-based game in any mode. You can’t ask for 1v1 balance in this type of a game, nor can you ask for full 5v5 balance because it isn’t deathmatch. It’s a game about having your team sit in as many small circles as possible for as long as possible, while preventing the enemy team from doing so.

MithranArkanere.8957:

If you make this unblockable, the recharge would have to increase to 240.

Nah, nah, the CD needs to be reduced, and every other part of the mesmer’s kit needs to be nerfed so that every viable build revolves around Moa, and nobody can even consider using anything else! And then buff it until it’s obnoxiously strong in top-tier play, but everything else sucks!

I figured that this would be the best d/d ele comparison.

Also make it a mantra.

With all the implications, like charges, instant cast…

Pride.1734:

You know ele will be nerfed like they nerfed ice bow.

Don’t worry ele’s you will always be top of every gamemode.

To be fair, the reason eles are at the top of PvE has nothing to do with why they’re good in PvP.
PvE rewards higher damage comps more than anything else, and fire staff 2-1-1-1-1-1-2-1-1-1-1-1 is the highest sustained damage in the game (provided might/fury is capped and the other incidental damage buffs, like banners, are there, and also provided the enemies don’t simply walk out of your AoE).
PvP rewards bruisers/generalists more than anything else, and d/d cele cantrips is the current strongest bruiser setup.
WvW staff just has multiple fields for healbotting/might/swiftness.

Iavra.8510:

Lightning Whip should daze on hit. I mean, it’s lightning, after all.

Yeah with no icd and a daze duration equal to the cast time!

That would be balanced, I’m sure.

Rednik.3809:

You know, there is definitely something VERY wrong with cele d/d if you need a guide about fighting against him.

Guides to fighting any strong pick are a staple of fighting games anywhere, from SSB to LoL.
This is standard, and not a mark of D/D ele being OP (though it is, but it’s unreasonable to expect to be able to beat somebody who is good at a class without understanding how their class works).

Go zerker arcane staff (jihad staff).
It sucks, realistically, but if you beat people with it you have every right to dance on their corpses, and you can do some hilarious tricks.

Like running frost bow for #5, which is an unbreakable stun for forever, or double lava fonting someone by dying on their face (it’s so cheesy but I’ve won 1v3s where people stood in it).

You play semi-supportive in that you’re not holding points usually, but are still doing the most damage ever.

One thing to add is that ring of earth is a two-second projectile block, so that is not the right time for rapid fire.
I would say probably never projectile attack an ele in earth, regardless of build, they all have some counter to it.

The trick to beating them is that while they have a lot of things in one build, they don’t have them at the same time, so paying attention to attunements can tell you what they are actually capable of at any given moment. Keep in mind that they have no gamechanging elite to break up their rotation or give them significant combat boosts (the closest is GoE, but frankly it’s just the least bad elite and you shouldn’t die to it if you know how to deal with each one. Cleave if you can, and kite them slightly, if you have any experience with rangers it shouldn’t be a problem).

BrokenGlass.9356:

Churning Earth: 3.25 | cast=4.2 aftercast=0.6 | cd=30 {8 bleeds for 8s}

^^^taken from the all elementalist skill data thread.

Firstly, its cast time is extreme. Being as it is a full second longer than it states, it is easily interruptible, even by mobs. Even if it were the 3.25 second cast time stated, it would be a bit to long. Any ranged interrupt is easily viable, and no stun daze blind or other cc lasts long enough to cover its use in PvP. (With the possible exception of Head-butt a berserker elite skill, but this requires A LOT of coordination for little payoff.)

On my elementalist, (condition build, Fire/Earth/Arcane, using both stat conversion traits to maximize condi damage I have 1,635 condi damage resting before food, might, and sigil of corruption.) The tooltip states that it will do 10,569 damage over 11 1/4 seconds, for 8 stacks of bleed. (Giver’s weapons + traits for +40% duration resting before buffs.) Its cooldown is 30 seconds.

Yes this is an AoE skill and so is pretty darn powerful, but lets compare it to Signet of Fire. 1/2 second cast, 16 sec Cooldown, 2 stacks of burn for 14 sec, is 10,764 damage. I can cast two of these for 20k dmg in 32.5 sec.

What this amounts to is that while Churning Earth is supposed to be high risk high reward, it just isn’t.

It’s damage is very poor by comparison to all other spells that could be used in the same time frame. So… in the time that I could have cast Churning Earth, I can instead cast Signet of Fire, Signet of Earth, Ring of Earth, Phoenix, Dragon’s tooth, Attune to Earth, Earthquake.

Now, before I get too much deeper into this, let me say, I love the flavor of the move! The idea of causing the earth around you to bubble like a witch’s cauldron, then explode with shards of stone is just cool as hell, and I do not aim to have my redesign change its flavor. It should be a long cast… and it should root you. This is for PvP, so when a player sees you casting it, they should have to choose between making distance between you and them, or closing in for the interrupt.

The changes I propose are as follows:

1. Shorten its cast time to reflect the cast time on the tooltip. 3 1/4 seconds is just fine, and a shave down to 3 even would be better. —-“This will shorten the cast just enough that you might get to fit it into a dps rotation without loosing too much.”

2. Make it increase your toughness while casting and apply Aegis for 1/2 second, pulsing once per second during the cast.—-“This will ensure that good timing can still cause an interrupt, but also allow it to be a move one uses under pressure, rather than a move that you simply never use, unless your timing it against enemies closing on your position. This will have the effect of making it feel more like how the rest of the earth attunement’s abilities feel.”

3. It should apply 6 stacks of bleed for 10 seconds. These stacks should be applied on the three pulses, two stacks at a time, ensuring that if it is interrupted early, it was still worth pressing the button. —-“yes this is a damage nerf, but it is aoe , also my number 4 suggestion will require its damage to be lessened.”

4. Reduce its cooldown to 25 seconds. —-“This would ensure that it is handy more often when one goes into earth attunement, and having it there as a shield, and reliable condition damage is something that earth attunement really needs, no matter which weapon your using in the MH.”

5. Remove its cripple effect. —--“While its nice, and it was an attempt to slow folks closing for the interrupt… no one needs a cripple that lasts for less time than the self root of the move.”

6. Drastically increase the burst damage vs bleeding targets. —-“In sinister gear with rabid trinkets, its damage is 1,526 on the tooltip with an additional 493 vs bleeding targets. It’s base damage should be decreased to 1000, but its damage vs bleeding should total to 2600 making it worth casting in zerker gear… and being as it adds 2 stack of bleed every second for three seconds, it should always get the bonus damage, unless an enemy uses a well timed cleanse.”

If there is some element to the original design that I missed, I’d love to know what it is/was, but as it stands now, I feel that this move is underused, and in fact, has no real good place that it can be used… even 4 seconds of scepter’s earth auto attack bleeds for more damage.

What do you guys think?

I agree with any churning earth buffs seeing as it is one of the worse skills out there, but I don’t think people will be too open to offhand dagger buffs until d/d cele gets nerfed.

1) Lol.
Like actually, it’s a healing signet. Every healing signet in the game heals passively, not to mention that signets need to have an actual passive effect.

2) So basically, make tempest and arcana no longer able to be taken, in addition to completely gutting every single ele spec in the entire game (d/d cele fire/water/arcane is the only one that is anywhere near meta, the rest are all subpar).

Yes, fair suggestions totally involve making the entire class permanently unplayable in every mode, at every skill level.

DarkSyze.8627:

Unholy Pillager.3791:

DarkSyze.8627:

All i will say is: there is a major website with 70 million requests telling people not to buy Hot and to leave the game. One of the listed reasons Is Not Only The Elementalist Profession.

I will quote one thing that website said,

“Anet: Guild Wars 2 Was Never About The Players. Indeed: GW2 Is Centered Around Anet”. ’"It Is All About Anet justification to power and control". “They even create class/es to fulfill their narxxxx image to be and do what THEY want” “Anet is obsessed with fulfilling their Perfect class/es needs” “Anet want their Perfect Class/es to feel Superior and Famous toward other class/es” "

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/4-ele-and-1-thief-win-ESL/page/2#post5435734 ?

No wonder why thief profession feel limited with builds

My predition: Elementalists, Thief and Mesmers will intentionally never be balanced. As long this new Arena net team who only care about themselves: not their players is in charge of the game. Also, as long this new Arena net: ‘play the way we want’ is there, nothing serious will happen to balancing the professions including Elementalists.

That is all.

Sorry, but this is incorrect as well. Thieves aren’t bad, balance wise. Sure, you pretty much always want one on your team…but never more than one. Mesmers, aside from being bugged and irritating to fight against, honestly aren’t that overwhelming. Elementalists are difficult to balance, but they do seem swing between the top and bottom tiers. If Arena Net were unfairly favoring them as a policy, that would not be that case. As an aside, the only serious long-term mistake that they made with this game (in my opinion) was making pets the ranger mechanic, thereby crippling their skill ceiling and making them literally impossible to balance. This was pretty obvious in the recent WTS, where ranger was the only profession which wasn’t used.

As for this website…why should I take your word for it that some relevant website actually said that, and why should I trust this web site without knowing what it is? If you want to bring an outside source in here, by all means do so. Just make sure that you actually post its name and web address, rather than expecting us to take your word on its validity. I apologize for my bluntness, but you don’t exactly have a track record of honesty on these forums.

Edit: by the way, if those are actual quotations from a web site, it’s obvious that that web site’s authors are not native English speakers. Did you try to translate it, or was it already translated for you?

“Did you try to translate it, or was it already translated for you?”

It is in a different language i understand. I use google to translate it.

“but you don’t exactly have a track record of honesty on these forums”

Interesting, evidence? I find it funny that many times i love giving evidence to support my investigation and making case. I will wait for your evidence

Why should i give resource? Is Arena net working with their players to fix the game? Is Arena net working with their players to improve the game? Is Arena net taking suggestion from their players to make the game fun and challenging?

Look at these threads. These are same problem from 3 years with comparison with new threads 2015. Where is Arena net working with their players to fix the game? also to improve it? Do you see any similarity? Do you see any difference? What did “Nerf” do to them?

-Will focus on Elementalist only: to not derail Op thread-

Elementalist

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Overpowered

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Ele-is-OP-at-mele-range

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/My-elementalist-is-too-OP-Anyone-also-bored

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Too-many-burning-effects

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Ele-being-looked-at

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Devs-Ele-s-too-good-nerfs-incoming

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Stop-the-threads-about-buffing-the-ele

Half life 3 confirmed.
Jet fuel can’t melt steel beams.
There is anything intentional about GW2’s current state of balance.

I’ve been thinking that one of the things GW2 really lacks that couldn’t be too horribly difficult to implement is some sort of pick/ban part in PvP.

We already have a full minute before matches start to completely change our builds, so why not make that an actual important part of the game rather than just having another minute of AFKing?

For those who don’t already know the impact of a player-based ban system:
It lessens the impact of horribly obnoxious builds – Why complain about d/d ele when you can just ban blinding ashes or soothing disruption?
It forces evolution of the meta – when your OP freelo build suddenly misses a key trait in every match, you start having to branch out and over time, the meta will change in response. This is less of a case in LoL, where there tends to be a larger meta than can be entirely banned, but in GW2 there’s maybe three builds that dominate at any given moment.
It gives a buffer and an indicator for balancing – If people ban something constantly, it puts that out of the meta and also tells Anet that it needs looking at.
It creates a whole new element to the metagame, so that you can pick more diverse strategies and ban common counters.
TL;DR, ban phases make the game way more interesting.

Since queue times are long enough without people having to take two minutes to sift through what’s banned or not, I assume conventional pick ban phases are out of the question.
I have a few ideas what it could look like in GW2.

Option A: Part of your build includes your three bans, which can be any trait or utility skill, but not weapons or amulets because that would allow way too much control over a match. In each match, one random person from each team gets all of their bans.
Pros: Quick, doesn’t actually mess with queue, can’t actually ban everything from a single class (though you could wreck a single utility type or traitline).
Cons: If you banned three same-level traits in a tree, you could effectively ban a single traitline if you wanted, which might be too much control, especially if the other team’s bans are another traitline in the same class!

Option B: Each person has a single ban in their build, everyone gets their ban. Still limited to traits and utilities.
Pros: Everyone gets their ban!
Cons: bad for soloqueuers, because overlapping bans are less common for team queues where you can coordinate it beforehand. Possibly too many total bans, turns into ten total bans in competitive when teams are coordinated.

Option C: Voting, like on map select in current queue. Three bans in total.
Pros: more intuitive, and more random, so builds that are hated would still see play.
Cons: Interrupts queue, making it longer, very few bans, could create people dodging matches repeatedly to try to get their build not banned. Less control for players hurts the metagaming aspect.

If anyone has ideas of their own do share.

I’m of the opinion that this would be an easy thing to implement (it’s all menus with minimal design options and no skill animations or icons that aren’t already in the game), which would make the game more fun overall. Also would reduce the sheer number of ele threads.

TIL that to style, playing the right way on necro means not transferring conditions to anyone other than the person who put them on you, for some unknown and obviously unintended reason.

Kharr.5746:

Projectile finishers are based on the PROJECTILE, not the field. Some projectiles have a 100% chance to be a finisher while others (spammable ones) have a 20%. It would be totally OP if spammable projectiles had a 100% projectile finisher. Imagine if auto attacks (which are mostly 20% chance of projectile finisher) had a 100% chance to apply burning if shot through a fire wall.. Totally OP. This would increase the damage of most projectile auto attacks by more than 100%. There’s already way too much burning without projectile finisher spam.

Actually ele earth staff auto has a 100% projectile finisher, though luckily it’s useless so it doesn’t matter much. Hurl on scepter has a 5x projectile finisher (as in, five projectiles with 100% each), but that is sort of hard to pull off solo (you would have to drop the field, swap, and then immediately double cast #2, or precast the first part a full rotation in advance).
Projectile finishers just really don’t do enough to justify the effort, while blast and leap finishers are pretty cool.
I don’t think that the idea here would be OP or meta shifting so much as confusing to anyone trying to figure out finishers.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Literally just nerf cantrips and buff the other utility types, and everything will be a-ok.

Uh, no.­ How is that only nerfing d/d ele? This is the kind of very bad blind nerf we don’t want.

Our only meta build for the entire history of the game has been cantrips + water + arcane. I think that a good solution would change that, at the very least.

Like it or not, the core of D/D ele is water cantrip synergy, and reallocating that power is probably the only thing that will actually create build variety.

Sure, but the reason why it is like that affect all builds not just d/d and is not what is the problem with d/d.

The real problem that exist with d/d cele is that it can still do so much damage despite investing so much into defense. That it is possible to have it all is the problem. A problem that none of the other weapons have with all that exist atm.

So, IMO, the problem lies with d/d skills letting them access too much of what they should not considering what they invested into. Not cantrips. Cantrips are only taken because no other alternative to fulfill the profession needs exist otherwise. Make it so that a glyph or a signet can fulfill these needs and you will see plenty of diversity. People are all too willing to see new path and options as long as they are viable.

Maybe remove one blast finisher and add cd on fire fields as well as reduce burning for all… start with something that will only touch the problem not what is not.

I would argue that d/d uses cantrips best, and since having four useless utility types (soon to be five, probably) is the single biggest problem our class faces, that would be where I direct my attention. This is also because most of the things that make people really complain about ele, like near-permanent regen, vigor, protection, mobility, cleanses, and even a good chunk of our might comes from cantrips.
I’m not suggesting only a nerf to cantrips, I want the other utility types buffed, but that being said I don’t think any good thing can happen to the class with cantrips in their current overloaded state.

Why are you guys taking the guys who is blatantly claiming rangers are overpowered in PvP seriously?
On another note, adding single finisher effects to fields without finishers might be overly confusing, and the same could be said for certain fields modifying skills in a way outside the skill description by raising effectiveness (wait why is this fire field only sort of a fire field? And why is my 20 finisher proccing constantly?).

Saiyan.1704:

@P Fun Daddy.1208
I hope you know i’m not trying to argue just to argue. I truly want to understand the semantics around Conditions in the game. Currently DS goes against the “any build type can work” motto. These build types being power, sustains, and condi. There isn’t any other trait that acts like DS does.

As far as “why wouldn’t anyone bring a power build?”.. well, why wouldn’t anyone bring a condi build? Condi Should be another form of damage, soft countering classes who choose to go with a 10k burst damage and skip condi defenses. That’s fine, I understand that.

Condi cleanses… regardless of any other reduced duration traits, abilities or equipment, condi cleanse is this game’s main form of condi defense. The game is balanced based on a certain unbalanced items. Go 100% in one direction may seem OP until you hit a brick wall; a build that soft counters you. Not a trait that hard counters you.

DS is a direct counter, not a soft counter. like other traits in the game. It’s only useful when it’s against full condi team. Numerous people disagree with the way the trait handles conditions. You said yourself that you dislike the trait and it’s not because it is OP in any way. Again, it’s the mechanic that i’m trying to wrap my head around. Not the performance factor of Earth Attunement. It could have been any other trait in any other tree on any other class.

I think the real disconnect that we have here is that I’m thinking from a team-based perspective, while you’re thinking from an individual’s perspective.

Diamond skin is one of those things that can be horribly obnoxious to the individual, but like any other cheesy hard counter against a single build type falls off against a team. My only defense of it is that it isn’t actually overpowered in any mode, despite how some people think it is. While it might not be fun, it is completely on budget in how it acts, and I haven’t seen a solution yet that allows it to actually function in a way that is worthy of a grandmaster slot and isn’t a clone of another traitline’s function (I am of course assuming that Anet won’t just replace it with something actually fitting the earth line, like something that makes bleeds worthwhile).

We absolutely don’t need more boons, I feel, so putting resistance on it would probably be a mistake, turning it into another triggered cleanse also seems odd to me since that’s sort of the point of water. Pretty much every other suggestion has been straight nerfs, and that doesn’t make much sense to me either.

My personal suggestion is to leave the thing alone, and if it ever actually becomes strong to immediately nerf it so that it is once again subpar but not actually unusable, as it has been since its release in the current form.
It’s fine to have a hardcounter for a single build type with that kind of investment (going bunker with a full traitline dedicated to it), but what irks me is how passive, and binary, it is. It’s either too strong or useless in any individual fight, with basically no middle ground, and the worst part is that this is determined without any regard to actual player input. It’s a completely stagnant mechanic, and the only reason I defend it is because of those who either think it’s actually strong, or can’t figure out how to compensate for it and don’t want to have to.

I’m getting pretty tired, so that got a little bit ranty and probably somewhat incomprehensible, sorry.

Alekt.5803:

SkiTz.4590:

Why even run earth line over OP fire right now?

Because earth line with Diamond Skin can replace water at the moment when built around, and you can also give up cantrips for something else. The suggestion is also made in consideration of the Tempest Specialization. Moreover, it is also to put down the cheese factor of Diamond Skin and push it toward a new gameplay option.

I would argue with you, but I don’t even know where to begin on this one.
There is no ele build without water and/or cantrips that is viable, period, not to mention that building around Diamond Skin actually requires taking water for at least the sustain.

It just seems to me that running a full condi team is literally asking to be countered.

The rare cases where you completely stomp a team because they didn’t bring cleanses will be always outnumbered by the normal cases where you get horribly stomped because they did bring cleanses.
Even in any sort of team fight, having a single power user alone will render DS completely harmless.

I guess my real question is, why would you ever rotate three people to a DS ele without a power user? It just seems very contrived to me, in that in a fight of that size you would assume there would be enough coordination to bring at least a single person who can do direct damage, DS or not.
It’s nearly exactly like asking for a full team with no cleanses to be viable.

RevanCorana.8942:

Yes Yes Yes Yes
A cat is a cat, a long due nerf is a long due nerf.
Reminder:
RING OF FIRE (weapon ele): 3 Burn Stacks for 5sec | Cooldown 15sec Casttime 1/4sec
PURGING FLAME (utility guardian): 3 Burn Stacks for 5sec | Cooldown 35sec Casttime 3/4sec
3x cast time 2.3x recharge for burn guard (but burn guard is broken or so they say aha)
On top of this obvious flaw, the ele stacks might passively (remember might the boon that really benefits only celestial builds) heals passively, stun passively, get protection passively.
You know what’s even more annoying than an unbalanced class?
An unbalanced class that requires 0 skill to win because everything’s passive!
They can run away and still do the same amount of damage no need to face your target.

I just wanted to stop by and say that while d/d is obviously overly effective, very few of the things you listed are actually passive.
Most of our boons, especially might, come from blasting fields and swapping attunements, which is for the most part a calculated effort that involves us giving up some aspect of our kit for ten seconds.
Every build benefits from might substantially. It is simply more apparent on a bunker than a zerker for obvious reasons.
The only passive stun is the traited shocking aura, which every class has an equivalent to, like Mirror of Anguish. See wiki: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Control_effect#Related_traits
The passive healing signet has an equivalent across most classes.
Not to mention, if you died to a d/d ele running away, something went horribly, horribly wrong. Either you walked through ring of fire at least three times (assuming a minimum health pool zerker with zero condition cleanse), or… actually that’s the only thing a d/d ele could possibly damage you with while facing away. Everything else is PBAoE (Point blank area of effect for the gaming illiterate).

Saiyan.1704:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Saiyan.1704:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Saiyan.1704:

uhohhotdog.3598:

Some builds are meant to counter other builds. That’s how it works.

There’s not a single trait in the game that counters Bunker builds or Power builds.

So no.. that’s not how it works.

Stone Heart counters crit, which is power, not to mention that toughness counters power and there isn’t an equivalent condi stat.

The price of going condi is being countered by anyone with some cleanse.

Stone Heart is definitely not a counter to power builds… Power builds can work around the Earth Attunement, having a window of opportunity to burst during Fire/Water/Air attunements. Considering it takes about two (sometimes three) classes to efficiently burst down a Cele D/D Ele, the same can definitely happen if the Ele goes Stone Heart. Just don’t burst when he’s in Earth….

VS Diamond Skin
Two condi classes can’t burst down the Ele.
Three Condi Classes can’t burst down the Ele
This assumes they’re Carrion and not the under performing Rabids amulet.

Exactly what makes you feel that these two traits are on the same performance levels in terms of what they’re meant to do?

You just said that there isn’t a single trait that counters Power builds, and that’s literally the only intent of Stone Heart. It doesn’t have to hard counter it to be a counter. The same goes with stacking armor. It counters power, but it doesn’t hardcounter it.

Not to mention “three condi users can’t take down a ds ele” really makes me wonder why someone was running three condi users in a roaming or spvp group. I can’t think of any reason why that would be a good idea, with or without diamond skin.

Again, SH does not counter power builds. If that was its intentions then people would be screaming nerfs at an invincible ele. Luckily, that’s not the intent of kitten’s the otherway around as the meta isn’t condi.

What leads three of any build or class in a single SPvP game? SoloQ.
On that point, are pure condi teams not suppose to work in this game ar all? If Arenanet straight up says “No”, then that makes a whole lot of sense and is equally dissapointing.

Well if you look at how conditions and cleanses work, it’s obvious that a pure condi team will never be viable, or even remotely good, so long as people continue to run lots of cleanse, which they will until debilitating conditions stop being available to power users.
So long as the same cleanses that are useful against half the cc in the game remove the entirety of condition damage, conditions will never be strong in organized play, unless conditions are buffed to the point of absurdity (as in, so strong that it’s actually impossible to even survive without fully speccing into cleanses), or cleanses are nerfed to the point of near uselessness.

It’s a staple of competitive games.
The idea is that, in order to take the objective (creature), you have to be able to defend the area and prevent a steal, which requires coordination and good awareness.
Turning the objective into “whoever gets there first” is a lot less dynamic.

Saiyan.1704:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Saiyan.1704:

uhohhotdog.3598:

Some builds are meant to counter other builds. That’s how it works.

There’s not a single trait in the game that counters Bunker builds or Power builds.

So no.. that’s not how it works.

Stone Heart counters crit, which is power, not to mention that toughness counters power and there isn’t an equivalent condi stat.

The price of going condi is being countered by anyone with some cleanse.

Stone Heart is definitely not a counter to power builds… Power builds can work around the Earth Attunement, having a window of opportunity to burst during Fire/Water/Air attunements. Considering it takes about two (sometimes three) classes to efficiently burst down a Cele D/D Ele, the same can definitely happen if the Ele goes Stone Heart. Just don’t burst when he’s in Earth….

VS Diamond Skin
Two condi classes can’t burst down the Ele.
Three Condi Classes can’t burst down the Ele
This assumes they’re Carrion and not the under performing Rabids amulet.

Exactly what makes you feel that these two traits are on the same performance levels in terms of what they’re meant to do?

?
I’m not defending Diamond Skin, I don’t use it and I dislike the design of it, which is basically to do what sufficient cleanse already does, but more obviously and completely passively, of course only if you’re already a bunker of some kind.

You just said that there isn’t a single trait that counters Power builds, and that’s literally the only intent of Stone Heart. It doesn’t have to hard counter it to be a counter. The same goes with stacking armor. It counters power, but it doesn’t hardcounter it.

Diamond Skin is supposed to be a feast-or-famine kind of deal, where if you run into a power or hybrid you’ve wasted a whole trait line, but have a massive advantage against condis, which it is. I personally don’t like this, but while it isn’t fun it also isn’t overpowered by any stretch of the imagination. It’s been in the same state for months, and has literally only ever been possibly good in solo roaming or yoloqueue, where you might be lucky enough to run into a condi user whose day you can ruin.

Not to mention “three condi users can’t take down a ds ele” really makes me wonder why someone was running three condi users in a roaming or spvp group. I can’t think of any reason why that would be a good idea, with or without diamond skin.

Colt.9051:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Literally just nerf cantrips and buff the other utility types, and everything will be a-ok.

Uh, no.­ How is that only nerfing d/d ele? This is the kind of very bad blind nerf we don’t want.

Our only meta build for the entire history of the game has been cantrips + water + arcane. I think that a good solution would change that, at the very least.

Like it or not, the core of D/D ele is water cantrip synergy, and reallocating that power is probably the only thing that will actually create build variety.

How about just buffing the other utilities that don’t see the light of day so that they can at least have SOME synergy that’s similar to what cantrips can do, but to another aspect. Signets ever since the Fire Aura on signet use got taken out, they seriously lack any synergy on any traitline. The only traitline it has going for it is earth… In ONE trait for a CD reduction and passive effect continuation after using the active. Signets pretty much are condition based, and there are condi damage traits in the earth line so to make signets on par with cantrips, make it so they have synergy in another trait line, like air so they can give some defensive effect when they use signets. For example, an air trait for signets so that a signet activarion also gives you 3 seconds of superspeed, or in arcane so if you activate a signet, depending on the signet used you get an aura for 3 seconds based on the element of the signet. (The heal signet can give a Light Aura for example) so to make these more viable. Glyphs are also on the kitten end because of no trait synergy. Glyphs create a wide variety of effects ranging from summoning lesser elementals to reviving allies to creating storms. Make some traits that will enhance the effects of these utilities such as duration or damage. Arcana is already at a good place as far as damage and defensive traits go and reenforces the glass ele style really well. Conjures are situational at best but I won’t go in depth with them, but I will say the trait in fire is an OK start, but there needs to be more of a reason to use conjures besides icebowing.

Glyphs and Signets need their own identity on where they fit in a build because as of now, they both don’t have any!

I would say cantrips are our strongest because they give us access to a lot of stuff we normally lack, like the tele and especially the stability.
Arcana probably could be good with a few minor buffs (including replacing arcane blast, which is frankly too low-counterplay to ever be actually viable), mostly because it actually does something, which glyphs and signets basically don’t. The only part about it I really dislike is Arcane Power, which sucks against multiple targets (so mesmers, necros, anyone with pets). I run arcanes personally, so I may be biased.

The only utility glyph that actually does something useful is glyph of storms (GoEP basically only exists to do cheesy burning builds), and the elite is just the least bad of the elites. GoLE just sucks outside of solo PvE, and GoR is unequivocally not worth slotting.

Signet of Air is the only one with a moderately strong active, and its passive is made useless simply by speccing into air or our abundant swiftness, which is odd to say the least. The healing signet is good, but only for sustain, which signets don’t seem to really be about. They don’t really seem to be intended for any specific purpose, actually.

This is why I think taking power away from our most used and obviously op spec, which is based around cantrips, and moving it to other utility types, which are underused and pretty bad, would be a good idea.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Literally just nerf cantrips and buff the other utility types, and everything will be a-ok.

Uh, no.­ How is that only nerfing d/d ele? This is the kind of very bad blind nerf we don’t want.

Our only meta build for the entire history of the game has been cantrips + water + arcane. I think that a good solution would change that, at the very least.

Like it or not, the core of D/D ele is water cantrip synergy, and reallocating that power is probably the only thing that will actually create build variety.

Saiyan.1704:

uhohhotdog.3598:

Some builds are meant to counter other builds. That’s how it works.

There’s not a single trait in the game that counters Bunker builds or Power builds.

So no.. that’s not how it works.

Stone Heart counters crit, which is power, not to mention that toughness counters power and there isn’t an equivalent condi stat.

The price of going condi is being countered by anyone with some cleanse.

Use the earth one in PvE because it sort of tanks!
Use the glyph in general in PvP because it’s the only one which objectively helps us (until rebound, but it’s bad), because tornado sucks and FGS makes you lose your real weapons!

Literally just nerf cantrips and buff the other utility types, and everything will be a-ok.

Lol.

Fire isn’t actually that strong, honestly. It’s not a complete waste of a traitline now, as it had been for a while, but really it just happens to be better than earth and air, which isn’t exactly noteworthy.

Arcane and Water are the strong ele lines, and I would argue that water is the problematic one.

The name is irrelevant to balance, this is purely a buff and it doesn’t make sense for a single one of these traits to be more powerful than the others.

…Every trait like this is based off of acquired stats, not base stats. Changing only one would be weird.

Yeah PvE is mostly staff, with some scepter/focus lightning hammer. Occasionally d/f is used for utility, like in some skip areas the focus skills are nice and some dagger skills are useful, but people tend to switch back to their damage weapons for actual fights.

I recommend lightning hammer because you will at least have to learn some rotation skills, staff tends to be somewhat boring if effective.

Lightning hammer is also better if your group doesn’t have a whole lot of might, staff has a hard time keeping more than six stacks on its own but LH can hold onto 20+ for the whole group (blast finisher on auto + 2 on weapons, but if you already have all support roles filled (might, reflects) staff is better.

To reiterate what Prisoner said, there is absolutely no such thing as base damage in this game. If you need proof, just look for any damage formula.

There is a base power stat, which determines minimum damage, but that is the same across all professions.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

whats wrong with hard counters?

It’s not so much that it’s a hard counter as that it’s a hard counter with extremely minimal investment that is completely passive and has an extremely simple method of application.

It would either have to be super conditional, to an extraordinary degree, to be this strong, or would have to not be a sigil at all, though this would still probably be too accessible as a rune.

The trick with balancing hard counters is that in order to be one to something else, you need to be hard counterable yourself, or not have a lot of other impact. Having it on a sigil is just bad form, not to mention that the last thing we need is yet another autoattack proc.

I agree d/d ele needs a solid nerf, but this is definitely not the way to go about it.

What people think they’re saying: “I want d/d ele to be weaker”

What this thread is actually saying: “I want a single minor build choice (a single sigil) to be able to completely hardcounter every single might-reliant build in the game simply through passive procs on my autoattacks”

Nier.8741:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Snip

A build that duels really well because it is a “bruiser” should not be able to have an easy time dealing with a gank. THAT is the whole point, d/d ele has everything.

You play shoutbow instead of D/D ele? You get bursted and is easy to gank and chain cc.
You play back point guardian instead of D/D ele? You have no escapes and you have no mobility.
You play ranger back point instead of D/D ele? Well ranger is just an inferior version of ele anyways, whats the point? Oh and at least ranger doesn’t blind you when you hit it during fire aura. And if you go “bruiser condi ranger” then you’re useless on team fights, unless you go trap in which case you’re easy to burst.

But if you play D/D ele, then you have NONE of those problems that the other “bruisers” have.

P.S Backpoint and Bruiser are interchange-able.

YES people DUELS MATTER. MOST classes will have such a bad match-up with d/d ele it’s ridiculous, most of the time you will need help killing this easy mode class. Sure, you can say “this is a team game, learn to gank D/D ele” but D/D ele can delay 1v2s so easy compared to other “bruisers” causing your team to outnumber a different point SO EASY.

This is why nerfing D/D will help the game right now. You can’t say “don’t nerf D/D ele because it’s only a small fraction of a larger problem,” considering D/D ele’s role as a POINT HOLDER deletes competition from OTHER point holders. In Conquest YOU NEED point holders, it’s not a “bruiser problem” it’s more like this one class deletes the purpose of other classes.

Do you understand now why your “larger problem” logic is beyond flawed and is a point that isn’t worthy? Bruisers are NECESSARY in conquest, but D/D ele deletes the point of other bruisers.

…You miss the entire point of the post. It’s not about bruisers in particular, it’s that so long as a mode doesn’t reward other build types, there will always be a single build that is best at that. This should be obvious to anyone who has seen more than two patches in this game; the strongest, most dominant build in conquest is literally always a bruiser, because conquest doesn’t reward any other build type enough.

It’s not that they excel at any one particular task or adhere to a single strategy; they use a mix of nearly everything. Look at literally any other competitive game with solid all-rounders. Their point is to be moderately strong at everything, but lacking in focus.
The problem is that conquest DOES NOT reward focused builds, because the nature of conquest punishes anyone who doesn’t do at least moderately well at everything.

The meta is entirely stagnant, and that’s where a lot of the problems people are having is coming from. The classes change periodically, but their function doesn’t (well, except for guardian; meta guardian has stayed in exactly the same role since launch, with an assured spot). It’s always been two tanks, two bruisers and a roamer, where the tanks and roamer pretty much exist to supplement the bruisers.

It’s not like nerfing ele will actually solve anything. Two days later there will be another slew of forum posts proclaiming that some other class (probably warriors again, or possibly engies; they tend to be the ones in that role the most) are OP at everything and need to be nerfed, and it will stay that way until people have a reason to use another strategy.

The exact same complaints you have against D/D ele have been true for every single top tier bruiser since the start of the game (strong duelist with solid mobility and sustaining in small-scale fights), because burst isn’t desirable, real tanking isn’t desirable, support isn’t desirable, hell, even map control isn’t desirable (as in vision or movement control). No form of specialization actually helps your team more than a bruiser does, outside of the single roamer who tries to make the bruiser win faster and the tanks who sit on a point all day so that the bruisers can run around capping.

If you don’t think that’s a problem then there’s no point in arguing with you.

…Can’t people just post in one of the fifty other threads on this topic and stop cluttering everything up?
D/D ele is the best bruiser in a metagame that is by necessity dominated by bruisers, for the following reasons:
1) Complete lack of a ban/pick phase in matchmaking. In more competitive games, it’s possible to pick counters and build responsive teamcomps to counter the enemy’s picks, like picking a cele sig necro into d/d eles (whatever you might say, this is a solid counter and if you can’t use it that says a lot about your ability to play). This makes bruisers stronger, because they are by definition generalists.

2) Point capture modes benefit bruisers especially well. Bruisers are moderately tanky and have the ability to deal acceptable damage (if you try to argue it’s at berserker level, do an actual comparison) while sustaining, and have good mobility. These are exactly what conquest demands, and nothing else. This has always been and will continue to be the case until the chosen mode of the majority of players changes.

3) Close-quarters small-scale fights. Conquest forces small fights on a number of points, and strong sustain like what celementalist has is really strong in smaller fights, where there isn’t enough damage most of the time to burst them down properly. Not to mention that any bruiser is by definition strong in 1v1s, where they can outsustain their opponent while gradually killing them.

4) History. If you look back, the most problematic build in conquest for the entire history of the game has been whatever bruiser was strongest, from hambow to spirit ranger (for those who can’t remember, there were a few months where somebody decided to make autoattacking with spirits up the optimal playing method of ranger…) to d/d ele. It doesn’t take a whole lot of brain power to figure out that ele is just the strongest bruiser in a game that rewards bruisers more than anything else.

The one thing that pushed d/d ele over the edge was the burning changes. It used to be strong, but not overpowering, until suddenly burning, which eles have always had a ton of, became the single strongest condition in the game.

But really, if you nerf ele you’re only treating a symptom of the larger problem, which is that conquest rewards one and only one playstyle, and whatever bruiser is next in line will suddenly be the most obnoxious thing in the world.

style.6173:

@OP:

Quit complaining. Necro is actually in a great position right now. You just need to ensure you are playing it the right way. Its always funny how some people try to play every class the same way. Each class has a different role. Follow it.

Lol. Condition transfers currently have a pretty hardcore bug, which is the entire point of this thread that you managed to miss somehow.
The situation is this: There are three players, A, B, and C. A and B are on the same team, and A applies conditions to C. If C then transfers those conditions to B, and both A and
B get downed, A will rally when B dies, despite being on the same team.
This is not, presumably, intended behavior.

Way to make a fool out of yourself, buddy.

The article is a very good one, and explains the entire “learn to play” phrase (when used correctly, at least) very well, which is many game issues are solved at higher levels of play, because strong tactics have counters for the most part, and a whole lot of gaming is in fact pretty well balanced because of this. It’s entirely fine to have a rock-paper-scissors approach to balancing, and to tactics, but it is very often that strong tactics don’t have good counters, or that the entire meta becomes based around a single tactic and its counter.

This is where people get confused. A whole bunch of people throw out this article to say that the above situation is fine (as in, our current meta is entirely dictated by celementalists and countering them), but that simply leads to a binary form of gameplay, which is boring after about one match on each side.

Stagnant metas and binary gameplay are both bad for game health in general. When somebody says “x build is totally dominating the meta and forcing the game into a stagnant pattern of a single binary build/counter pair”, and someone throws out the article, which is essentially saying “the game is playable because you can counter that build”, it’s entirely avoiding the point, which is that gameplay choices have been reduced to a single set of playstyles and that isn’t fun.

This isn’t to say that a lot of people wouldn’t benefit from the article, because a lot of gameplay does apply (for example, people hating conditions when they’re actually pretty weak if you play around them properly), but it doesn’t really make sense when people are talking about a single build not having a strong enough counter to have a complex meta, or being so strong that it forces a simple meta.

Yashuoa.9527:

Wolfric.9380:

You gain 3s reflection. So if someone shoots a projectile on you it is sent back.
The radius is for the blast damage and criple.

and if a teammate is within range of my magnetic wave/ring of earth and i use it when a projectile is fired on him, than he will still get hit?

Only for ring of earth. For magnetic wave, the reflect itself is not AoE, but the other effects of the skill are. If you put yourself in the way, however, you could reflect them anyway.

There is a difference between nerfing something and completely wrecking it, and you chose the latter. What a whole lot of people on this forum fail to understand is that seemingly minor reductions often make huge differences, see the entirety of League of Legends patch history for examples (where base health nerfs of about 50 out of 500 have completely pushed a character out of the meta).
So making such huge changes as nerfing ring of fire by 2/3 is kitten stupid, especially on a skill that counters exactly one tactic (range dancing) and whose power is completely based on your opponent screwing up.

Shocking Aura in this case is pretty kitten similar. It’s a single stun unless your opponent is obscene levels of bad (it lasts four seconds and has a 2 second icd on a 1 second stun, so best case scenario there’s about two seconds where you can get a second 1 second stun off), which can not only be avoided completely, but ends up having a huge tell, because they first switch to lightning, then start glowing white, and if your reaction time isn’t good enough to determine whether you should immediately stunbreak or not you need to do fewer drugs. Not to mention the sheer number of stuns that are instant and don’t require your opponent to screw up (half the fears in the game, MoD, shatter daze, and a number of knockbacks), make this seem a little bit odd to me.

I’m not saying that celementalists don’t need nerfs, they do, but people need to figure out that asking for massive nerfs is purely stupid on any build.

I just want to throw a few things out there before the thread becomes too convoluted:

1) There is no base damage in this game. There is, however a base power stat, and that is what determines the damage in the tooltips. It is not possible with the game’s setup to nerf base damage, at all. The only thing that can be changed is scaling.

2) Certain build types have advantages against other ones. Bruisers (a mix of sustain, defense, and damage like celestial is supposed to be, regardless of what it actually is) counter pure damage builds (like zerker or sinister). This will always be true because of the basic concepts of these types of builds, and if this isn’t true there is usually a problem. So if you are playing a damage dealer and find yourself 1v1ing a bruiser, you have already lost because you made the stupid decision to go outside of your role.

3) Anyone who gets hit by churning earth deserves to die, either because the person that landed it is so ungodly good that they deserve the kill, or the person who got hit is so new or bad that they deserve the death.

4) No part of this game is balanced around 1v1s. In WvW, pretty much everything is part of a larger strategy that doesn’t take them into account much, and in sPvP, fighting is based around taking and holding points. While the latter often requires a sort of 1v1, this isn’t actually a real 1v1 because those don’t generally involve standing on a small point without using stealth or kiting.

They’re all really horribly clunky (cast time + picking up if you want to use the second half), so nearly never useful in PvP.
Icebow is good in PvE because 4 hits massively on large targets.
FGS is good in WvW because it gives you super mobility, but nothing else.

I agree with the sentiment, and where you think the (hopefully inevitable) nerf needs to go, but I don’t think that Anet will split the trait, now that they’ve pretty much rolled all the CDR traits into other ones.
And as always, any power taken away from cantrips needs to be added to glyphs, conjures, or signets (arcanes are okay, and while still weak are not as bad as the other three), because frankly I’d like some choice in what utilities to run.

I usually run glass staff (because d/d celementalist is sort of unfun, but every other d/d build is pitiful), and I can attest to its fun factor.
One thing I recommend trying is arcanes instead of cantrips, possibly with a conjure thrown in. Obviously it’s not as good, but it really is a whole different playstyle, with real burst and some weird condition control thrown in (immob or chill spam).
You also get the exciting feeling of being super combo-y, with three field types and a number of blast finishers, as well as the inherent need for staff to plan cast orders out to land skills.