Guild Wars 2

Jade Dragon and Aetherized skin staff ftw

If anything, enhancing the game to where more support/heal-oriented and control/support-oriented characters would usher in a need for a more challenging game.

Make mobs more challenging. No more stack. No more DPS piles. Give us a real reason to cripple, freeze, stun, interrupt, etc. Make heals powerful and really make a reason for everyone to jump in that water field and blast back from near wipe.

Then give us tools to communicate VoIP? Even a simple text-based announcement of a field going down….

Getting off topic, but if we do get better teamwork options and therefore more challenging mobs, communication could become an issue for casual/pugs.

I get why we don’t have trinity. It’s great in a lot of ways, but as others above have said, it takes a lot away from that group feeling, of roles. It takes it from “hey, I’m a rook, and you’re a knight, and you’re a bishop” to “wtf, we’re all pawns…” That said, I love not having to wait for healer, not being blamed for a party wipe if I am the healer, etc.

All that said, there is an “easy” fix to this. I say easy because it wouldn’t require massive reprogramming. I put it quotation marks because of balance issues.

The other parts of the soft trinity, support and control, need MASSIVE buffs. We need compelling reasons to not just spec Zerk and DPS the kitten out of everything.

I pretty much only Ele, so for example of where control/support lacks is some of the frost abilities only lasting for 1-2 seconds. In PvE, that has a completely negligible effect. My AOE heal on staff hits for piddly. I could go on and on, but you know what I mean.

Best profession/class in any MMO, IMO, was the Enchanter from Everquest (and 2 I think). This class specialized in managing aggro, stunning mobs, charming them, support to allies, and some damage. You could turn the tide in battle with well-time spells, make ridiculous encounters manageable, etc. Just posting this is giving me nerd-wood. I didn’t do great damage, but my role was important.

Rather than waiting for that monk/cleric/tank to show up, GW2 did do it right in that ANYONE can do ANY of those things…just not quite.

Make control and support more potent.

Gimme star power.

+1 for at least instacast. +1 for stunbreak…move the one from GoEP over dem dar. Not sure about both at same time.

Scepter in general isn’t my favorite in PvE, as it has limited AoE, feels clunky, and while it has a lot of burst, burst isn’t something critical to dungeon junk. It’s way too single-target IMO. Nevertheless, I want to work with it as it’s the weapon I’m weakest with overall, and of course, it’s the one legendary I have pre for…so…. must learn!

I know /D is a clear favorite w/ Scepter for all those bursty might stacks, but I have to say, I’m addicted to the focus.

How do you guys S/F? The two weapons don’t seem to work as well together as D/F, D/D, or S/D. They both have nice skills, and getting remote might w/ DTooth / Phoenix on firewall is nice…and yes you can burst earth 4 in that firewall for might…but it just all feels kind of off.

How do you build for S/F? Where do you play? Midrange? Extreme range? Point-blank?

Looking for some pointers.

Oh, and I have either full zerk/ruby (can go scholar) or I also have a PvT set w/ boon duration (water/monk/trav).

My playstyle / goals are adaptable, so make any suggestion you like, whether it maxes out damage, or provides utility.

Thanks!

Guys, please read the December 10th post right here in the ele sub forum. Jon is interacting with elementalists and has posted quite a bit.

Yeah, I’ve noticed that using conjured weapon combos (Fire Axe 4 → 5) will give me the auras but will not share them with the team. If they even fixed that one part, powerful auras would indeed be powerful. Right now, it should be called Mediocre Auras.

PlatypusRex.3428:

Obvious modification: We’d have to have internal cooldowns added to all skills, traits, sigils, runes, etc, for weapon swap , elemental swap. A standard 9 seconds would be fine, so that this change doesn’t modify that part of Elementalist play.

TL;DR:

Add internal cooldown for any on-swap weapon or attunement buff (equalized to what it is now)

Oh wait…

Jarek.2430:

0 Attunement CD

go high boon duration

Be the attuning Ele and rotate through the attunements as quickly as possible.

0/15/20/15/15 (edit: due to poor math) (remaining 5 point depends on what weapons choice chosen)

Fire (0)

Air(15):
One with air: superspeed when attuning to air
Eletric Discharge: strike target bolt of lightning when attune to air

Earth (20):
Stone Flesh: Gain tougness when attuned to earth
Earthen Balst – damage and cripple (3secs) when attuning to earth
Rock solid – grant stability to nearby allies when attuning to earth

Water (15)
Soothing Mist – regenerate health
Healing Ripple – heal nearby allies when attuning to water
Cleansing wave – remove condition to yourselve and allie when attuning to water

Arcane (15)
Arcane Fury – gain fury when you switch attunements
Lingering Elements – attunement bonues linger after leaving that attunement
Elemental Attunement – when attuning to an elmeent (might, regen, swiftness, protection)

Constant – stability, might, regen, swiftness, protection, superspeed, fury, toughness to self
Continuous – stability, might, regent, swiftness, protection, condition removal, and heals to allies
Continuous – earth damage – with constant cripple) to enemies. bolt of lightning on target)

Yes please.

If only I had addressed this in the original post with stating that internal cooldowns would be necessary to prevent any on-swap attunement / weapon mechanics.

Thanks everyone!

J Season.9156:

I have an iMac 27’’ and use the native Mac Client. I don’t ever experience any issues of note. I did once have an issue with the client not launching. However, as with any Mac application, just delete the preferences in the application support folder and it works just like new (but you most likely won’t ever need to do this).

I wouldn’t see a benefit to running the Windows client on Parallels. I do use parallels, just not for GW, performance is always better on an OS working natively with its intended hardware.

So you’d think that mac beta client would run better than parallels regular client?

Cool. I was asking because I’m looking to get into iOS development and the only tie I really have to PC is GW2. Other than that it’s all the same: interwebs, email, netflix, etc.

Hi all,

Looking into getting the iMac 27 (upgraded)

3.5GHZ i7
8GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM – 2X4GB
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4GB GDDR5

A) Is anyone running anything similar, and are you happy w/ GW2 mac client and iMac? I see lots of problems on the forums, but didn’t know if this is for older models.

B) Is anyone running GW2 on parallels? How does it run?
http://store.apple.com/us/product/HE069LL/A/parallels-desktop-9-for-mac?fnode=000104090a

I’m a PC/Windows user, so keep that in mind when you respond. I’d be moving from a AMD Phenom x4 9750 w/ 8 GB and a Nvidia 560TI.

Thanks.

I’d take another regular utility any day of the week. I’d love to, if even for fun, do all of the regular glyphs, signets, or weapons. That said, cantrips would be nice. FGS can be fun, as can elementals, but I do find myself wishing I had that forth regular one as the previously-mentioned elites aren’t OMGSAUCE, WATCH OUT, HERE I COME.

silvermember.8941:

In PvE the elementalist doesn’t have any issues, then again rarely do any other class.

the problems and all the hate comes from when you start involving some type of PvP, then the cracks fall.

WvW zerg vs zerg, ele stands back gets free loot.
WvW roaming, ele has to be significantly better and put in 3 times effort for something an average warrior for example can achieve.

SPvP, ele is a free kill or a waste of space.
Ele doesn’t provide any real benefit that other classes do not have and they lack the survivalbility to be worth taking into a team. Amply put, why bring an elementalist when another class can do the work more effectively.

in any case, your question seems to miss the point of the complaints. Generally, most of the loudest complaints on this forum focuses on some type of PvP. There is a reason why the has been no ele in the last few tournaments.

Just to add Leveling an ele is pretty much easy, however the ele tends to fall apart at 80 when compared to other classes.

This, plus the comments about PvP, plus the number of traits that aren’t good, are filler, or are still bugged. That said, all of those bugged traits don’t stop you have having a great time in PvE. It’s more of a, “hey we serve 48 flavors of awesome icecream! (disclaimer: 30 flavor machines aren’t working atm).” All the same, the remaining 18 flavors are fun for PvE.

Overall, the complaints come mostly from those who have been around since beta weekends and have seen repeated nerfs to the class, warranted or not.

Seen lots of people weigh in, but no one able to post an OP combo so far or a specific OP concern. I’ll look again tonight when I play.

ThiBash.5634:

The answer isn’t about balance or overpowered skills.

The answer is that it would effectively give us a 25-skills action bar and that’s not what the game is about. The reason there’s an internal cooldown is to give you limitations to make the game interesting. Would chess be fun if every piece could move to any square on the board?

I think the more accurate analogy would be chess, but you can only use the knight every 3rd move, not any piece any location.

Zelyhn.8069:

This debate again?
I think if you really want 0 cd on attunements you should post there.

You’re just mad that this goes against your FA D/F build.

I’d be ok with a FA-like trait in each line, so you could specialize in one if wanted to. I know others have suggested it too.

A recent post by dev said that they are aware and working on a fix.

Jabberwock.9014:

Never change chain lightning. It is mandatory for tagging in high lag or chaotic situations.

I’d say lava font, fireburst, and meteor shower still completely outshine this at least in PvE, not sure bout WvW. I’ve been running mad king’s realm constantly and I never get below gold.

ATMAvatar.5749:

Given how attunement swaps are considered weapon swaps, which grant effects based upon sigils, and the fact that we have traits which give us boons upon swap, you aren’t likely to see the CD removed. With that in mind, the simpler fix is to normalize the CD at a good value and then change the arcane trait line to impact something other than the attunement CD.

Internal cooldowns to prevent OP.

BlackBeard.2873:

I understand where you are coming from, but I disagree with you for the most part.

Our primary disadvantage is supposed to be “cost” of leaving an attunement and swapping roles locking us out of that role for a period of time. I still think this design can work if they didn’t break so many other things around it (giving us even more costs to burden us further making out play inferior).

If you really want to use “the right skill at the right time” with 0 ICD, play an engineer. I have switched more permanently. Its much more fun, less handicapped, and I even get to pick which “attunements” I want, and then actually being good in each one. Further, I can swap “attunements” (kits) instantly and use the exact right skill at the right time. Still learning, but combined with the better abilities that are generally available, makes engineer way more rewarding and even fun to play. Most of what you have learned with ele (swapping often, managing boons/condis, properly using combo fields, aiming aoes) are directly transferable to engineer.

And I hear what you’re saying, but…ick. If I want to have good mechanics switch to engy? This is the partially kitten class? I’ve been thinking about giving engy a whirl, but I have way too much invested in ele.

Treborlavok.3504:

I think one of the biggest problems with no attunement cd would be the minor 15 traits that we could basically endlessly spam while just auto attacking and using other skills we see fit.

1. I mention the need for Internal cooldown for all skills if 0 attune.

2. Wouldn’t you rather see FA die for all to have 0 attune than FA live?

Devs,

Thank you for putting some time into this weapon. I wanted to weigh in on the changes now that I’ve had some time to get used to them. Curious if others would agree / disagree.

1. Meteor shower seems to be better, liking it. Fire is in a good place. I wouldn’t change a thing.
2. Radius increase on Geyser is nice, tks.
3. I appreciate the attempt at improving unsteady ground, but for PvE, it isn’t helpful.
4. Overall ground targeting stuff makes staff easier.

What still needs work, IMO, PvE vantage:

1. Fire is awesome. Thanks!

2 Air: Get rid of chain lightning. 3 targets cannot even come close to comparing w/ lava font / fireball / fireblast. If I want AoE, I’ll go fire. Make auto air attack a high single-target damage spell (help w/ bosses and maybe pvp). Make blind spell instant or hit for way more dmg. Make gust an AoE cone. Not effective for PvE right now. 4 and 5 are fine.

3. Water: All fights really come down to A vs. B’s time to kill. Damage decreases your TTK on opponent, opponent’s healing increases it. Water blast provides healing, yes, but at the expense of a ton of dmg. Please increase damage, radius, etc to compete with fire. How compete? Make them equal in their impact on TTK vs. TTK. I know that’s what the skill is trying to do now, but I think it just needs a little bump.

Tested numbers: 800-1500(crit) dmg w/ no might on fireball. water for 250-600(crit), and heals for 400 on my zerker gear. Assuming crit to crit.

1500dmg for fire auto attack VS. 600 dmg / heal 400 on water auto. = 1000.

There’s about 500 points of love missing from there somewhere. Using cleric’s would increase the heal at the expense of the dmg, balancing nothing.

3 (water cont): Geyser (and Healing Rain). As said before, appreciate the radius increase, but these need duration increases more. I’d even take a nerf to healing per tick for a longer duration. Blink and you miss geyser. I’m talking 7-10 for healing rain and maybe 3-4 for geyser. Increase duration on frozen ground too (or lower CD).

4. Earth: Increase damage on auto attack. Eruption animation start to finish much quicker. mag shield should have some buffs like focus 4. Turn 5 into a PbAoE imob. The slow single-target is meh.

Biggest issue in PvE for earth staff…new unsteady ground. I haven’t tried in PvP but in PvE, it’s near useless.

a. Too many mob fights are stationary. This skill does nothing most of the time.
b. If you accidentally cast too close, mob is unaffectekitten
D effect is so minimal that you’d almost missed that it happened. mobs are up and at you lightning quick. Yes, some of them can be hit twice, but frozen ground is better overall.

Hate to say it, but this one needs another go over at least for PvE. Maybe make a direct cast instantly cause the KD? Are others using unsteady ground to great success? What are you doing? Thanks.

Reserved for future use.

Reserved for future use.

Example:

With Staff, I could now

1. Eruption.
2. Fire → lava field.
3. Back to Earth – > EA → blast finisher
4. Arcane blast.

One more set of might.

Hi, all. During the recent dev video where the latest patch changes were revealed, I noticed—indeed one of devs pointed out—that they had disabled cooldown between attunements to speed up showing us the skills.

Why can’t we do this? I see a lot of harping on the forums about lowering the CD cooldown to de-emphasize arcana. Help me troubleshoot this: What OP scenarios, what game-breaking, meta-changing problems would occur if we could change to any element whenever we wanted, how often we wanted, and with no penalty? Try to consider all weapon sets/combos.

Please keep reading before flipping out.

We already have super-high cooldowns, so switching around isn’t really going to grant us access to any more skills (power) than we have now. If I want to, I can F1, blow it all, F2, blow it all, repeat….It does however open a lot new strategies for us.

On the one hand this change will lower the skill cap (pro and con) by no longer having to factor in attunement CD into getting access to a skill. On the other hand, you won’t find yourself blowing a skill just because you’re about to move on and you won’t see it again for too long a time. You could actually become a much more reactive force. Imagine making decisions exactly when you want to. Burst 4 on your focus, switch to water, realize you’re still getting ganked, back to earth and put up obsidian.

What I see now for negatives:

A) This would make fresh air obsolete.
B) With Arcana no longer reducing CD, it would either have to just increase boon duration, or another buff might be needed.
*C) Some skills would probably have to have their CDs increased (ick, I know), such as water staff 2, air lightning strike (scepter 2), dragon tooth (fire scepter 2), etc. Right now there’s not real reason to camp water for example, so the CD of the attunement itself acts like the real CD, preventing spamming of these kinds of skills. If we had unlim/unhindered switching, I could drop into water every 4 seconds, drop this, and move on.

Obvious modification: We’d have to have internal cooldowns added to all skills, traits, sigils, runes, etc, for weapon swap , elemental swap. A standard 9 seconds would be fine, so that this change doesn’t modify that part of Elementalist play.

TL;DR:

Increase the CD of some skills so that they’re not lower than the lowest we can have with max Arcana.

Keep auto attacks the way they are.

Eliminate all attunement cooldown.

Add internal cooldown for any on-swap weapon or attunement buff (equalized to what it is now)

Encourage the swapping play style that was intended, but give more purpose and strategy to that switching.

I’m throwing this out there for some fine-tuning. I will admit that I come at this much more from a PvE perspective; I hope some of your PvP / WvW people can provide some insight.

Please weigh in on this idea and/or demonstrate some OP combos w/ zero attunement cooldown.

On Ele, Burning fire does not grant extra 3 seconds of burning to fiery greatsword.

While you can get a fair amount of tagging any weapon set, I’d say that staff definitely is the easiest, safest, and most helpful. You can lay down fire fields for mass might, water fields for heals, and as lost says, the air can provide opportunity for area swift. Long-term it can get a bit boring hitting fire 2…but it works. Stay w/ the zerg.

I’ve been taking ice bow and glyph storms for more aoe goodness.

I get the goods.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

PlatypusRex.3428:

Thank you. It would help if each class had its own bug forum.

No thanks. I don’t want to visit 8+ bug forums to see what anomalies people are seeing.

You don’t want to have to make a couple of extra clicks in order to organize chaos?

Agree, but so many other, bigger, smelly fish to fry.

Hahahaha….wait…

Whaaaaa?

I get a weak auto attack that requires an entirely different skill to make up for its weakness…also depriving me of….another skill? So air is 1(a), 1(b), 3, 4, 5?

Is joke?

Clarification. Air 1 on scepter. Sorry.

When I see those numbers rack up with each consecutive second on Air 1 and FGS auto attacks, am I seeing:

A) a series of attacks, each a little more powerful than the next.
[ 200, 500, 1000, 2000 = overall dmg of 3700 for entire chain]

B) a series of attacks where you get updates on the ongoing total and the overall damage is represented by the very last number shown.
[ 200, 500, 1000, 2000 = 2000 dmg total for entire chain ]

If (B), Air 1 needs some serious love.

Sorry, I feel I should know this by now, but I’ve been seeing conflicting answers.

/nub

Thank you. It would help if each class had its own bug forum.

Blarg. This was a double post. Meant to bump the bug forum one. Apologies. Please close thread.

Bumping this as a forum moderator just posted in ele forum, reminding us to bring up bugs. This one got buried amongst others.

I’ve already posted it, but it got buried quickly in other posts without any response. Soothing Wave no longer grants regen to ice bow on initial cast or on the 2nd pick up.

Bumpity bump bump, bumpity bump bump, look at forum posting go…

Perhaps because I’ve never seen it working, I am confused on what lingering elements was supposed to do in the first place. Could anyone explain?

Overall I’m liking the new earth shield. Despite the general issues discussed at length on these forums regarding cooldowns and cast times etc, the weapon itself it much improved.

The auto attack certainly does more damage than it used to, though—hope I’m not alone on this—the animation seems very clunky, uncoordinated, and easily disrupted if your target moves out of range. Without staring intently at my toon, I have a tough time telling if I’m hitting or not. Now, this was in mad king realm, so my video card might have been having a heart attack, but something about my little Asura flying in the air while hitting made it seem…off. It seems very slow.

1. is cool. I like having a block and the damage return isn’t too bad. I like that it’s mobile.

1. is improved w/ multiple targets possible.

1. is vastly improved. mobility much appreciated.

1. was improved for cooldown I believe, but I still wish I could move while casting.

Now just make earth shield instacast and a stunbreaker on cast and earth shield FTW.

All observations/judgments made for PvE. Maybe this has use in point holding in Pvp, but I pretend no expertise on that front.

Double-posted in Bugs forum, but just letting other eles know:

Soothing Wave used to (and according to the tooltip still does) grant regeneration to me when first summoning the frost bow and also to whomever (me if I like) picked up the second bow. This was working prior to the patch. Soothing wave / frostbow no longer offers regen, but soothing mist does still work with mistform and signet of water.

Soothing Wave used to (and according to the tooltip still does) grant regeneration to me when first summoning the frost bow and also to whomever (me if I like) picked up the second bow. This was working prior to the patch. Soothing wave / frostbow no longer offers regen, but soothing mist does still work with mistform and signet of water.

Please fix! Thanks.

BlackBeard.2873:

Skill previews, condi damage floaters, and ground targeting have great quailty of life improvements.

Eles got:

Earth shield changed as previous, still useless

Staff Water 3 now has a larger radius
Staff earth 4 acts like a very short line of warding (3s) on a 30s CD
Staff fire 1 now increases radius with blasting staff
Trait “One with air” now gives 2s of “superspeed” (100% run speed) on swap to air, yourself only (note this is still useless as it just over-writes your swiftness from elemental attunement)

Moral: Play another class for another 6 months.

What change specifically to earth shield?

One other FA question. Is the dmg still “bursty” enough on D/F w/out the Sceptre’s #2 skill? I’ll be trying it later either way, but my last attempt w/ FA involved sceptre.

LOL. Ok. I didn’t know if it was some kind of running gag.

Zelyhn.8069:

0/30/0/30/10 D/F
otherwise please play the way you want

Why do you keep putting “otherwise please play the way you want”?

Oh, one question on some of the FA stuff: i still want powerful auras to boost the team. Do something like 0/30/0/30/10? Or maybe 0/30/10/30/0?