Guild Wars 2

Tongku.5326:

Provost.6210:

This suggestion is intended to counter the current condition meta. Well, not actually. It’s really intended to counter the way that condition spamming builds are rewarded for doing exactly that: spamming.

Currently you can engage a condition build user and have five stacks of six different conditions before you get close enough to seriously use your own abilities. Even if you’re playing a class with a high health pool like a warrior, that poses a serious risk to your survival. You can pop a condition cleanse but, guess what? You have five more conditions a second later because all the other guy has to do is keep spamming his abilities with impunity. It’s as ridiculous as thieves being able to remain invisible whilst spamming attacks through your invulnerability or block until they finally land that 10k backstab.

My solution is to grant 5 seconds of immunity to a condition after someone has cleansed it. That way the conditionmancer has to actually display a modicum of strategy and skill, rather than just slam their face into the keyboard and melt all enemies irrespective of whether they used a condition cleanse (and whine like a bratty three year old if they come up against a diamond skin ele).

This would work for all conditions, from a thief’s bleed to a necromancer’s poison to a mesmer’s confusion to an elementalist’s burn.

Discuss.

Hmm

if there is some sort of a fair exchange sure, but not otherwise. For example, as a war you can just mindlessly and without any skill spam cleaves which tend to be particularly nasty against low healthpool thieves regardless if they’re stealthed or not or which build they use (condi included).

That said, as long as there would be a second or two seconds of immunity from power based damage for every second of immunity you get I’m all for it and see no issues with it.

The thing with warriors is that you at least have to stay somewhat close to your target if you are using a melee weapon.

Perhaps complete immunity isn’t the answer in this situation… maybe 5 seconds during which any conditions on you deal half damage and expire twice as fast? As a trade off, you’d gain 5 seconds of increased toughness (to counter power damage).

In reality I’d like toughness to reduce the effectiveness of conditions across the board, but this is essentially the same thing.

Crimson Clouds.4853:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Resistance

Forgot about that. I don’t play warrior very often, except for dungeon runs.

I’m not suggesting nerfing conditions (even though they are badly in need of it), I’m suggesting improving survivability against them.

Solomon Darkfury.3729:

Provost.6210:

This suggestion is intended to counter the current condition meta. Well, not actually. It’s really intended to counter the way that condition spamming builds are rewarded for doing exactly that: spamming.

Currently you can engage a condition build user and have five stacks of six different conditions before you get close enough to seriously use your own abilities. Even if you’re playing a class with a high health pool like a warrior, that poses a serious risk to your survival. You can pop a condition cleanse but, guess what? You have five more conditions a second later because all the other guy has to do is keep spamming his abilities with impunity. It’s as ridiculous as thieves being able to remain invisible whilst spamming attacks through your invulnerability or block until they finally land that 10k backstab.

My solution is to grant kitten immunity to a condition after someone has cleansed it. That way the conditionmancer has to actually display a modicum of strategy and skill, rather than just slam their face into the keyboard and melt all enemies irrespective of whether they used a condition cleanse (and whine like a bratty three year old if they come up against a diamond skin ele).

This would work for all conditions, from a thief’s bleed to a necromancer’s poison to a mesmer’s confusion to an elementalist’s burn.

Discuss.

Aaaaaannnnd you would end all use of conditions in pvp…. forever…

With a 5 second immunity? You have even less faith in the general level of skill in the game than I do…

This suggestion is intended to counter the current condition meta. Well, not actually. It’s really intended to counter the way that condition spamming builds are rewarded for doing exactly that: spamming.

Currently you can engage a condition build user and have five stacks of six different conditions before you get close enough to seriously use your own abilities. Even if you’re playing a class with a high health pool like a warrior, that poses a serious risk to your survival. You can pop a condition cleanse but, guess what? You have five more conditions a second later because all the other guy has to do is keep spamming his abilities with impunity. It’s as ridiculous as thieves being able to remain invisible whilst spamming attacks through your invulnerability or block until they finally land that 10k backstab.

My solution is to grant 5 seconds of immunity to a condition after someone has cleansed it. That way the conditionmancer has to actually display a modicum of strategy and skill, rather than just slam their face into the keyboard and melt all enemies irrespective of whether they used a condition cleanse (and whine like a bratty three year old if they come up against a diamond skin ele).

This would work for all conditions, from a thief’s bleed to a necromancer’s poison to a mesmer’s confusion to an elementalist’s burn.

Discuss.

Chokolata.1870:

Ok guys, there have been a lot of topics that all call for nerfs on this and that. But, taking a serious look at Ele, how would you go about nerfing it?

Personally I would:

-reduce the stat bonus from the Celestial amulet from 560-480

-reduce the damage bonuses from Pyromancer training and Burning rage from 10% to 7% (similar to how the Guardian +% to burning got reduced)

-reduce the burning duration of Drakes breath from 3s to 2s

-reduce the Ring of Fire burn stacks from 3 to 2

-increase Soothing Ice ICD from 20s to 30s

-reduce the Protection duration from Elemental swapping from 5s to 2s

What do you think? Too much? Not enough??

Why not just gut the class with a rusty spoon, make dagger main-hand only, and increase attunement recharges to 75 seconds while you’re at it?

Nerf protection duration? Sorry, but ele has lowest hp and weakest armour. That boon is one of the few ways eles are able to survive getting in to do our combo and getting back out alive.

Nerf ROF? This has got to be the silliest suggestion I see going around. Once the ele drops ROF, it’s up to you to walk into and out of it as many times as possible to get the burn stacks you’re complaining about. If you don’t like the heat, stay out of the fire!

Nerf celestial stats? kitten right off. Ele burst potential got castrated with an old butter knife and the only way elementalists have any versatility in their build right now is to run celestial. Otherwise they’re either glass cannons or impotent tanks who rely all the more heavily on the boons you’re all too eager to deny them.

You don’t want to nerf ele, you want to kill it.

Xillllix.3485:

1- Make some skills on the Warhorn 1200 range and ground target-able
2- Scrap the elite skill and start over
3- Make it so that Overcharge doesn’t prevent other skill usage

+1 to these

The three most important issues in my opinion for Tempest, closely followed by the strength of the Overcharge effects. Those also need to be buffed significantly for the extreme cast time they take and high probability of being interrupted.

Where’s my sword?

edit: kitten , Lyger beat me too that one. How about…

Hook, Line, Flopper

Disagree.

I like my rewards from PvP dailies. Play ranked if there are too many idiots joining your team. You can go back to unranked when it’s past their bed time.

I’d like to point out that I use S/F and I am more than a match for any D/D cele I encounter. For all the hate that people are spewing towards that build, it boggles my mind that most people who run it rely too heavily on the inherent strength of the build and are easily outclassed by someone like me, who is familiar with the skill rotations. Only once have I actually been stalemated in a 1v1 duel against a D/D cele, and we agreed to call it a truce and ply our efforts elsewhere when neither of us could keep the upper hand against the other through a solid minute. Fortunately it was already my node so it wasn’t a total waste of my time to defend it.

My point is, learn the D/D skills and you can outmanoeuvre and outplay the majority of the idiots who use the build.

FlashGamer.4017:

Of course they are not META, there is only one Most Effective Tactic Available (META)…

You’re not even in the right playing field, bro. While that’s clever, and captures what the term is used to mean, meta isn’t an acronym. It’s actually a misnomer; meta translates to “beyond”, and is used to refer to concepts which are an abstraction of another concept.
A footnote explaining a previous footnote is meta.
A film about people making a film, which in turn is about the film industry is several levels of meta.

Of course, video games are not the first point where the meaning of the term was garbled. Epistemology did it first, using “meta” to make self-referencing rules over a concept’s category.
Metadata is data about data.
Metarules are rules governing the application of other rules.

And finally we have the meta of video games. This is a slang term by any definition, referring to the most commonly used (and, usually, the most effective) strategy.
Conditions are meta in GW2 right now, which makes counter-condition builds like Diamond Skin also meta.

This has been your lesson for the day.

zapv.8051:

Your the one who is illiterate. There is nothing a lot of builds in this game can do to function effectively against a diamond skin ele. That is not true for any other build in this game. Other builds might provide an advantage, but this is completely different. By equipping this trait you have already won against many builds. Also, if condition builds where so faceroll than they would be in tournaments, since they aren’t they must be bad. The fact that you think conditions are OP means you are bad at this game because every class and all the good teamcomps counter full condition builds. Changing this trait to grant 3 second of resistance on entering earth would be a win for literally everyone involved, and your to blinded by bias and hate to see otherwise. Enjoy being petty and angry.

Okay, firstly, I refuse to be called illiterate by somebody who doesn’t even know the difference between “your” and “you’re”.

Secondly, I refuse to be lectured about playstyle and strategy by someone who is so evidently unskilled that they are making an unnecessary fuss over the very small threshold of hp (almost always under 2,000 hp) that needs to dealt as damage in order to make it so conditions can be applied.

Diamond Skin is designed to allow an elementalist to get their initial combo off before they are immobilized, chilled, blinded, bleeding, confused, and feared into a corner. Because that’s what happens now with the ubiquity of necromancers and mesmers in sPvP.

You are the one being petty and angry that you can’t run blithely into the fray and scatter every single opponent with one click.

Kodiak.3281:

The only game mode you can currently afford to sit in the same attunement as an Elementalist is PvE. The only attunement this is currently rewarded sufficiently in is in Fire because all other attunements offer lackluster DPS. So far, they haven’t announced any changes to any other DPS in other attunements. The few Horn mentioned Air abilities, Air being the primary DPS for Dagger/ are not large DPS adds but instead a CC move (pull) and a (piercing?) line DPS move. From a PvE stand point Tempest will only be relevant if it replaces the large % damage adds the class currently gets from Fire, Air and Water.

In PvP/WvW, being locked out of an attunement is a liability. As a front or backliner we or the groups we already support often rely on us to be able to do the abilities we have. Our entire class is designed around the concept that we can swap attunements and skills are balanced on that fact reinforcing this play style. The skills (so far) aren’t being rebalanced around that fact. For example there’s no stacking buff that increases skill damage or reduces cool downs the longer we are in an attunement (something that would actually make camping an attunement more viable). This means we’re still forced to put out the effects as needed. For example a Staff player might start in Air (Static Field) then use it’s water abilities such as Frozen Ground or Healing Rain, then swap to Fire to get some Meteors on but then need to swap back to Water for the Geyser refresh at the end. Locking a player out of these attunements is crippling as while the damage on Ice Spike is interesting (6-7k+) it’s certainly no stacked Fire damage.

The entire Tempest concept is based around being a front line support character. However from a WvW perspective if you look at existing frontline characters (Warriors, Guardians) they are largely built around the “Leap” concept. The Leap concept is where they use lowish cool down leaps to get in and out of combat scenarios. For example when the enemy team drops a Well Bomb on your location, you use a combination of Stability, Condition management and Mobility skills to get in and out of those scenarios. Examples of this are Savage Leap, Earthshaker, and Leap of Faith all of which have 8-15 second cool downs (base). Tempest, and Elementalist in general, lacks these kinds of short duration leap style abilities to keep base and instead is forced to rely on long cool down abilities like our Cantrips (40s – 75s) or long mobility moves like Ride the Lightning (40s). This will always leave the frontline Elementalist dragging behind the main force, and if you are separated out you take the full brunt of an offensive (melee frontline are required to stay together to spread damage out to live) which is why D/D “bruiser” Elementalists fell out of favor in group combat. This is not even considering that most front liners also run roughly 3000 armor (buffed of course) or so meaning the stats the Elementalist will need for frontline will basically neuter it’s damage output entirely.

The buzz about the shouts, such as the AOE stun Break, is rediculous. There are plenty of existing options that already are AOE stun breaks. Anything that gives AOE stability breaks stun. The most common examples are “Stand your Ground” on a Guardian or Mantra of Concentration (Power Break).

Simply put: it’s an interesting concept, but it’s wholly unrealistic of current game play and has no place that isn’t already currently being done by the Elementalist in a better fashion. There’s any number of other routes they could have taken, but they didn’t go those routes. If they had given Warhorn more mobility, it would have made it more viable for an Elementalist frontliner for WvW. Overcharging adding a channeling mechanic and locking you out of needed mechanics is just wholly ignorant of existing game play scenarios and how it would fit in there.

I want to bottle you and unleash you on the feckless idiots who roam these forums whenever they kitten me off. +1
ANet needs to stop designing this game around thematic conceptualization and recognize that the foundation of a successful skill, trait, or class is always going to be mechanics.

Having an elementalist channel so much elemental energy that it shrouds them in power is, quite frankly, amazing. Having it apply to their their already inapplicable frontline capabilities, however, is a waste. Having it lock the elementalist out of the crucial ability to attunement swap is just the nail in the coffin.

Even d/d elementalists (who LIVE in the fray) won’t touch this. Attunement swapping is just too integral to the class mechanics, it can’t be traded out. Overloading has zero synergy with how the elementalist class has to be played to be effective.

MailMail.6534:

atreyu.9624:

Are u guys telling me there are actually elementalists running this trait in spvp?!

YES! And based on my experienced, they lose most of their matches.

Your experience must not overlap with mine. I have a 60% win rate on my elementalist and I use DS, S/F, and a celestial amulet. If I lose a game, it’s because there was a lack of teamwork or the other team had better teamwork because they were a premade group.

Also, I’ll re-iterate to the people who are evidently illiterate and continue to whine about the “0 counterplay” (read: build advantage) when they opted to go pure condition, leaving out sustainability and direct damage: You cannot faceroll the whole competitive scene with one build. Shut your mouths and go direct your ridiculously OP condition spamming elsewhere or get wrecked because you were too greedy to balance your build out.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Here’s a fun fact: before the specialization patch, a Carrion condition necro with 6 points in Spite (so, very high Power for a condition build) using Life Blast (hardest hitting Power skill a condition Necro has access to) would take ~10 seconds (actually 9.8) to break through Diamond Skin on an ele with Signet of Restoration and sitting in water attunement doing nothing but autoattacking. And this is assuming only 100 Healing Power on the ele.

The Ele could literally be AFK and the Necro took that long in a high Power build to break through and be able to apply conditions. This also used up nearly half of their life force, which is difficult to generate on condition Necros anyway and nigh impossible when you can’t get any conditions on your target (as Feast of Corruption doesn’t generate life force on clean targets).

What do you think happens when the Ele actually plays?

Obviously they’d wipe the floor with that necro, and the necro would deserve it for sitting in shroud spamming only Life Blast. In terms of DPS using their normal weapon skills would be far more effective for the necro; with 6 spite and a Carrion amulet (which is my necro’s build, btw), one volley from Ghastly Claws should take the ele under 90% hp. Lich Form could only fail to take an ele under 90% hp if it was the necro who was AFK.

I don’t know who you’re kidding with this line of reasoning, but I’m not falling for it.

Phineas Poe.3018:

I think a lot of players actually get confused because the burn-heavy build requires Fire, which means they’re not taking Diamond Skin. But who you fight in matches can sometimes feel like a blur, especially when elementalists are so common in PvP, which can lead to “QQ” fests greatly overstating the capabilities of one build versus another for players that aren’t familiar with the class. Mesmers are dealing with the same problem, where people come onto the forums and cry that they can blind, daze, stealth, burst, and condition spam all under the same build.

I think that would be a fair concern to raise if it actually happened that way for elementalists. As far as my experiences go, the condition complaints are targeted towards the Celestial amulet while the QQ is directed toward Diamond Skin. The two are not mutually exclusive in this… Diamond Skin is the big thing that unskilled players are taking umbrage with.

Phineas Poe.3018:

I have hundreds of hours played on my elementalist. I know the trait isn’t OP and that it has many glaring weaknesses; personally, I think it could use a buff or redesign because sitting in Earth to avoid conditions is just tedious and limiting.

After hundreds of hours on your elementalist I am hoping that you merely mistook Stone Heart for Diamond Skin in this post alone, rather than trying to defend another trait that isn’t in question.

Phineas Poe.3018:

I just think it’s kind of bizarre that OP claims that engineers are “greedy” for running Rabid builds when that’s truthfully the only option we have currently (and power-equivalent builds just as lacking in survivability), and that elementalist has just as much burning access as engineers do.

I honestly don’t see the reason for this line of thought. All it does is serve to demonstrate my point: I opted to go for a build that offered some protection from conditions, while an engineer who QQs about his conditions not working and getting killed because he’s effectively a glass shrapnel-cannon/flamethrower has only himself to blame for not putting any defence in his build.

Courtyard can get thrown in the trash and kittened on. Worst map in the pool. You can’t even get your daily on it if there’s anything to do with capturing/defending points.

Since the recent patch, I have witnessed the GW2 community sink to an all-time low. I’m referring specifically to all the would-be semi-pro condition-spamming menaces turning the waterworks up to 11 about Diamond Skin.

Necromancers and engineers are, by far, the worst for this in my experience, but generally anyone with a notion to load up their PvP build with nothing but condition damage/duration and faceroll the whole competitive scene has invariably come to the forums and whined about this trait.

I didn’t make this to call you hypocrites, but I’d like to provide a sober perspective by pointing out exactly why you are the last people to be complaining about builds.

1. Elementalists have the lowest health pool and weakest armour. Even with vitality runes, the threshold an elementalist has to keep themselves immune from conditions is a maximum of about 2,500 hp. After that, they’re under 90% hp and vulnerable to conditions. If you can’t deal that much damage, then Diamond Skin is not the problem.
2. Because elementalist burst damage has been severely nerfed, forcing eles to run celestial if they want to have any combat versatility, the effective maximum threshold you have to deal with is approximately 1,800 hp before they’re under 90%.
3. Conditions are handed out like kittening candy. Even with Diamond Skin, elementalists have to run traits like Cleansing Wave and Cleansing Water, or at least one condition cleansing utility just to keep up with the application of conditions when they are under the 90% threshold.
4. The loudest QQers about this are the people who have eschewed vitality/toughness gear in favour of more condition damage and more precision. If an ele ran that set up they’d have 11k health and wouldn’t survive an angry glance from a half-decent mesmer. Frankly, you deserve to be punished for your greed and arrogance.

Additionally, many threads complaining about this trait have arguments along the lines of “elementalists are OP now”. I’d like to clarify what the actual situation is. Every class is OP now. It just so happens that a significant cross-section of the player base that is more skilled than you are really enjoys playing elementalist because it is the most engaging class. Because every class is OP, they can go back to their elementalist and be on a more even playing field than ever before. You’re getting stomped as much as you would if elementalists weren’t in the game, it’s just that more of the people stomping you are on their eles than they have been at any point since the game came out.

In closing, I heartily suggest that you learn how to play.

Please feel free to respond with your own thoughts.

Regards,
An ele

Ross Biddle.2367:

So ah, Diamond skin aint just a nifty trait to give conditions a hard time. While it might proc the ‘immune’ floater when you’re trying to land a condi on an ele running this trait, it might aswell spam “invulnerable” to any condition build that gives the ele a sideways look. Especially considering things like D/D ele with their high mobility/reset and burst healing. Vs. a condi build, diamon skin is teh passive OP .

• Suggested change: Diamond Skin grants 3s resistance every 3s while health is above the threshold- 90%.

This way a condi user can still stack up his condi’s, but can also strip the resistance as counter play to create windows of opportunity to take the Diamond Skin ele down. This would make actual dodging/evading important again for the ele instead of just ignoring all condi builds actions -_-u

We got resistance now. Might as well use it and solve some problems we couldn’t before.

I have a better idea. Get some power in your build instead of loading up 100% on OP conditions.

I run s/f cele diamond skin build and I mop the floor with pure condition-based builds. Not just because of diamond skin, but also because I have tooled practically every trait and utility for condition removal. And because people like you have this ridiculous idea that all you need to do in order to win is look at your enemy and bleed/poison/torment them to death in 5s.

As far as I can see, it’s the only thing countering the current meta. That’s exactly why I built it. I have to wear down the enemy in a battle of attrition, it isn’t a burst build at all, but it’s the only counter.

You just want to destroy it so you can continue your unchecked rampage throughout PvP riding on ridiculously strong conditions. How about you learn to play and maybe you’ll be able to get the ele below 90% hp (which requires dealing all of about 1,200-2,000 damage) so you can apply your precious conditions.

No.

No. No.

No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. NO!!!!!!!!!

I refuse to cavort with the idea of this half-finished class being slapped with the broken stealth mechanic. It will just make it appear to have a round playstyle, when in fact it will be kitten.

Oh, you have the hp of a terminal cancer patient and the speed of a thousand year old tortoise on heroin? Well, we’ll just give you kittening stealth and you can be as troll a class as thieves.

FrownyClown.8402:

calm down. Elementalists arent elementalists because of their weapon.

This.

I much prefer feeling like my elementalist has their own power than the thought of them being crippled without a wand/staff/magic bean stalk…

Referring to the message on beta-testing character slots… “Progress and rewards earned by beta characters or in beta maps will not be saved.”

I’m testing the new Revenant in PvP and fulfilling PvP track rewards. Will these be saved? What if I put them in my bank?

If I earn a title based on having played x number of games, and I just happened to have played the xth game on the Revenant, will the title not save?

Also, may I keep these exotic pearl account-bound weapons that came with the character slot? I paid $50, but I’m starting to think that the answer is going to be ‘no’.

Aomine.5012:

Provost.6210:

EremiteAngel.9765:

Lets consolidate our thoughts for the next patch.
what are the classes ranking from number 1 (needs the most nerfs) to number 7 (needs the least nerfs)?

1) Mesmers
2) Elementalist
3) Engineers
4) Thieves
5) Warriors
6) Guardians
7) Rangers

You’ve got to be kidding me.

Try this:

1) Mesmers
2) Engineers
3) Necromancers
4) Rangers
5) Thieves
6) Conditions overall
7) Stealth as a mechanic
8) Thieves (I know it’s on here twice, but it’s my list so I’ll say it as many times as I want)
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
99999) Elementalists

Are we playing the same game sir?

I ought to ask the same question of you if you think elementalists need to be nerfed.

This always happens when eles start appearing in the meta. We get hit with every possible nerf bat such that people notice when an elementalist actually appears on your team (or you get schooled by one). And, of course, it’s just downhill from there.

“waah waah this ele beat me. He moved around and used his skills, no fair!”

Suck it up.

EremiteAngel.9765:

Lets consolidate our thoughts for the next patch.
what are the classes ranking from number 1 (needs the most nerfs) to number 7 (needs the least nerfs)?

1) Mesmers
2) Elementalist
3) Engineers
4) Thieves
5) Warriors
6) Guardians
7) Rangers

You’ve got to be kidding me.

Try this:

1) Mesmers
2) Engineers
3) Necromancers
4) Rangers
5) Thieves
6) Conditions overall
7) Stealth as a mechanic
8) Thieves (I know it’s on here twice, but it’s my list so I’ll say it as many times as I want)
9) Heartseeker (thief dagger 2, which… if I am to understand the meta, is the only attack skill anyone should use [just pry numbers 1, 3, 4, and 5 off your keyboard] as often as possible)
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
99999) Elementalists

TheFamster.7806:

As everyone who plays ele in pve, pvp and wvw knows that scepter has some of the worse skills in the game in all game modes. In fact there are many skills that cannot be used because it does little to no damage, has unreasonable casting/channeling time for what it is, and has little to no utility. Basically most of the scepter skills are very situational or has no uses other than swag.

The skills that I feel as if they have unreasonable casting/channel time for what they do are:
Flamestrike, Ice Shards, Stone shards, shatterstone, and occasionally, dragon’s tooth.

Skills that I find lackluster and unrewarding are: Flamestrike, Ice Shards, Stone shards, shatterstone, rockbarrier, and dust devil

Basically out of 12 skills, 3 auto attacks and 2 main attack skills in my opinion are mostly out of touch. While rockbarrier and dust devil may have their uses, the auto attacks of scepter is miserable and weak. Most of the times casting these skills are a waste of time as they literally don’t do anything other than triggering Fresh Air trait, and even then eles are stuck in air for a long time.

In Pve, before the existence of Phanlanx warrior, Scepter/focus ele was a thing. The idea was that s/f ele will pre might stack, and use lightning hammer auto attacks to continue blasting the fire field the other ele provided to maintain high might stack. Even then the scepter skills were mostly disregarded. In PvP things become worse as eles were forced to rely on that short burst damage in air, occasionally using focus skills to set up bursts for phoenix and dragon’s tooth. In WvW, due to huge group support, most of the eles run staff, which is fine, but still shows that scepter is lack luster compare to other weapons.

I know that anet won’t care, but if it was possible, ele’s scepter auto attacks could be shown some love and tweaked for more damage or at least less channeling time. also some of the cds such as water trident, dust devil, and rock barrier should be lessened for what they do.

Sceptre needs some serious love. Chain lightning being the focus of my assertion, followed by dragon’s tooth. Swirling winds also needs to last longer, and have a chance to block siege attacks in WvW/PvP.

That being said, I run S/F in PvP and I love it. In my opinion, staff is the weapon that requires more attention at present. S/F, S/D, D/F, and D/D builds are all versatile and good at 1v1 or group fights. Staff just can’t handle it. It needs a teleport (like mesmer Phase Retreat), and condition management. Focus gives you Magnetic Wave, which cures three conditions… staff needs something like this. Alternatively, a condition transfer like necro’s Putrid Mark could work, but I don’t think it fits the theme for elementalists.

Ele is in a fairly good place right now. Water and Arcana are still pretty much mandatory, but I see variation in the third trait line choice… Earth, Air, and it’s possible to make a (slightly gimmicky) Fire build.

But every class is, to an extent, pushed towards at least one trait line as being indispensable. Any build that didn’t begin from that trait line was gimmicky, and would only work in certain conditions. When the meta would change, those conditions would no longer be present, and the build would fall out of use.

abclemons.7093:

EvilSardine.9635:

Yup, it’s so lame. No way to counter it especially if the engineer comes in stealthed.

Echoing a myriad of teef discussions. l2p against stealth. If you get ganked, too bad. It’s pvp (lite); it’s not Let’s-All-Sing-Along-with-Barney-the-Purple-Kittening-Dinosaur-Play-Hour.

One shot? Be less glassy. You don’t get killed by GB if you’re not being too classy… I mean glassy.

>Implying that dying from being dealt 36k in one shot is “glassy”.

How about we nerf… nothing.

Elementalist finally got an overall buff in a patch. There are thieves doing 36k damage right now and condition build classes like engi and necro are having a wet dream.

If you want to retool the way certain traits work, to make them more well-rounded, that I can agree on. But nerfing something? kitten right off.

Let’s look at the two most significant traits you mentioned.

Diamond Skin
I have a soft spot for this trait, ironically. It’s the one I use, and I think it works absolutely fine the way it is. Do you have any idea how much active gameplay and knowledge of skill rotations is necessary for making a build with this work? Tons. I can hold nodes against two pure condi opponents by keeping my health above 90% as much as I can. It’s the perfect counter to the current meta where everyone and their ugly pink moa is applying conditions. Let them get frustrated by facing some decent Diamond Skin players and go get some power gear. kitten this condi kitten.

Stoneheart
On the other side of the spectrum from condi builds are those cowardly kittens who hide in stealth until they can backstab you for 6-9k damage, plus whatever proc sigil they have that deals another 3-4k. If ANet refuses to reveal them the moment they even LOOK at their attack button, thereby allowing them to SPAM their abilities through your block/invuln duration until they get a hit, then the best counter to their bullkitten is a build that is immune to critical hits. Let them get frustrated by facing some decent Stoneheart players and go get some vitality/toughness gear so they can withstand a swat when they act like a kittening mosquito.

You want to retool these skills so that they’re less situational? Fine. Make Diamond Skin render you immune to the following abilities over 75% health:

• Bleeding
• Burning
• Poison
• Vulnerability
  And make all conditions half as effective (half damage, half duration) over 50% health.

And for Stoneheart, make it so that the Protection boon makes you immune to critical hits. That way you have to stay active with refreshing your boons, and if Protection is stripped you become susceptible to critical hits.

There, retooled but not nerfed. Happy?

Raif.9507:

Zalavaaris.5329:

Hey everyone, so im a very tanky necro player who usually kills who I fight (unless im severely outnumbered) I last a long time and my dots usually eat through whoever Im fighting. I was running around in WvW and came across this ele that I figured would go the same way. Not sure what it was about him but I never saw him drop below 95% health. I have ZERO idea how but it was pretty funny and almost embarrassing to watch. Now, im not one to yell for nerfs or anything but I would however like to know what it was that I was fighting and how do I beat it.

It is quite possible that this elementalist was running Diamond skin which makes them immune to conditions when above 90% health. This type of elementalist normally also pairs this with water so they can have a plethora of heals to keep themselves above 90% so you were hard countered most likely. Were the conditions doing any damage to them? Or not really? That’s the best way to know if they’re running that build. Best bet is to attempt to lower them below 90% and then bombard them with the conditions before they can get above 90%.

You beat me to posting this. I run diamond skin in PvP because all I ever run into is condi necros, condi engis, and condi (confusion) mesmers. Occasionally I’ll meet a burst damage player who forces me to actually switch to water attunement and play seriously, but 8/10 players have no gear that gives a power boost at all, and they deserve to be hard countered. I only ever get hit with conditions when I get focused by 3 condition builds who can do enough combined damage to bring my health below threshold. Or when some ridiculous power ranger #2’s me whilst I’m fighting a necro.

Seriously, kitten this condition meta. I remember when I didn’t have to spec my guardian entirely towards condition removal, and when my warrior’s naturally high health pool actually gave him the margin necessary to KO/stomp someone. Now the only way I can play my guardian is as an altruistic healing bunker with practically zero DPS dropping healing symbols on nodes to keep my party up. Sword? What’s that?* And my warrior using runes other than Superior Melandru? Ha! kitten that.

Seriously, I don’t see any reason why every ele shouldn’t be running Diamond Skin right now. I was torn for a long time between 00666 diamond skin and 06066 fresh air, but eventually I decided that I brought more to the team holding nodes with my increased survivability than I did through burst damage. Maybe I just get teams who don’t work together, and it’s my own poor luck, but until I find that my allies bring some synergy to the team I’m better off ignoring conditions. And hopefully it picks up and forces other classes to embrace more diversity.

Ah, kitten, who am I kidding? ANet will just nerf Diamond Skin so that it’s only effective at 95% health and above. Then another patch that makes it 99%.

• I absolutely refuse to stoop to the level of incineration guardian. What a bullkitten concept that is.

lvis.3824:

1.) Backstab HAS a cooldown , its called Revealed !

2.) Anyone crying about getting hit that hard ( from whatever profession ) is running class themself, and therefore dishes out the same dmg.

3.) To cry about thiefs atm is really a l2p issue, compared to every other profession right now they got kitten !

I spot a thief.

I’ll have sympathy for you when you are revealed the second you touch that attack button, not the 47th time you’ve spammed it even though I’ve got a 5 second invulnerable up and you manage to land 7k damage.

There’s a particular blend of bullkitten that goes along with seeing:
InvulnerableInvulnerableInvulnerableInvulnerableInvulnerableInvulnerableInvulnerable
InvulnerableInvulnerableInvulnerableInvulnerableInvulnerableInvulnerableInvulnerable
InvulnerableInvulnerableInvulnerableInvulnerable8000

Oh, and don’t forget your proc sigil on top of that.

Were it up to me, you’d have cooldowns on everything, not just backstab. Be thankful ANet has their hate on for elementalists and your class is on the backburner for now.

If I have three thieves on my team (thanks ANet matching algorithm), I applaud one (or all) of them switching classes. As it so happens, however, I don’t see it very often at all.

Staff ele is probably the most viable PvE build you can have, right up there with GS warrior. I did zerker staff ele from level 1-80. It taught me how to kite, how to dodge properly, and how to use my abilities in consistent rotations to get combos.

choovanski.5462:

Provost.6210:

Yes, I’m salty about trolls.

too salty to have fun it seems. if you can’t handle trolls the Internet and online games are going to be no fun for you

In games where people don’t act like kittenheads, I’m a humble winner/gracious loser.

In games where people deliberately try to poison the community, I get frustrated that there are no repercussions — aside, that is, from getting stomped as many times as they leave their base. Personally, I find it remarkable how they can be such kitten players when they are getting focused and can’t linger back waiting to reap the rewards earned by everyone else’s hard work. Their bullkitten BM aside, these professional leeches deserve to get kitten cancer.

Yes, I’m salty about trolls. No, they didn’t beat me, unless you count coming in after I’ve blown my cooldowns taking down two of their team mates in a 2v1 holding a node. No, they’re not all thieves (but thieves are, by and far, the most BM players).

I play this game to have fun, not to get backstabbed (literally and/or referring to the skill) by some opportunistic kitten who then proceeds to sour the environment by gloating over something that is:
a) not his or her achievement; and
b) not actually an achievement at all

Frankly, sPvP is too fast paced to have any need for emotes at all. The only time someone does it is to kitten someone off (or, in my case, after I’ve hunted down the kittenant three or four times and soundly wrecked them). It’s something I am happy to do without.

No, disabling their appearance in my chat log is not good enough. Their character still does the animation, and it still irritates me.

Either disable the emotes, or kick the trolls from the game when they try to emote near a downed/dead player — and hit them with penalties so they drop out of my MMR and I don’t have to put up with them.

In case some of you have the attention span of a gnat… I’ll remind you that I started this post out by admitting that I am salty about people gloating, especially when they have no kittening right to. And I have every right to be. I play the game for fun, not to be provoked by kittenheads. Don’t demonstrate in your replies why this kind of measure is exactly the sort of thing the GW2 community needs.

Thanks bye.

My deepest sympathies to you and your extended family. What a world we live in that allows us to be connected to so many wonderful people we may never have otherwise met, befriended, and loved.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I’m very sorry to hear of this loss. My heart goes out to his family, friends, and guild members. To know that his wife is facing health challenges at this time makes his death especially poignant.

I don’t know all of the plans for guild halls. But I think your suggestion has a lot of merit and I will be passing it along today in the hopes that this is something that we can add in the future.

Again, sincere sympathy on this sad event. Our hearts are with you all.

This is really touching, Gaile. Thank you on behalf of the GW2 community for showing such compassion.

This thread brought up the unexpectedness of “dragon hunter” as the guardian specialization. I can understand that new weapon options necessitates a change in mechanics, but I agree that it seems to be completely out of left field, and contrary to the theme of the class.

I’d like to see options for specialization, at least two (including the currently planned ones). Not every mesmer is going to want to be a chronomancer (as sexy as the specialization is…), so why can’t they have another option… perhaps Illusionist. In fact, all classes should have a specialization themed after the class-specific PvP titles. Magus for elementalist, Paragon for guardian, Phantom for necromancer… these are existing concepts of the classes that many people — myself included — find fit the theme of their characters.

That’s my suggestion. Thoughts?

Donari.5237:

That’s a long standing bug though they are “close” to the fix. They have to carefully check it against affected accounts though, ie those accounts that got the title and skins and need to have them stripped away without wrecking the rest of the account. Check the Support forums for longer discussions.

(Oh, if you didn’t know, there was a patch with a bug in which anyone making a new character — or a lot of people making new characters — got mistakenly linked as GWAMM’s).

I stopped playing for over a year. Not sure what GWAMM means.

For the past week I’ve been unable to access content through the Hall of Monuments. It says the content has been temporarily disabled and to try again later.

Is there an ETA on when this will be fixed?

The recent Points of Interest live stream went into detail about how guild claiming will be more meaningful in WvW vis-a-vis updated and new mechanics. I am overall very happy with the ideas being implemented, but I can’t help feeling that there needs to be more incentive to WvW-oriented guilds to dump so many resources into reinforcing and defending objectives that, currently, everyone wants to flip as frequently as possible so that they can be reclaimed for major (W)XP.

My idea is that guild claiming should have to be refreshed every hour, and that during the time that an objective is claimed all kills that would normally count towards an individual player’s contribution to “defend [x location]” also provide WXP to the guild. When the guild ranks up, each player representing the guild at the time is credited with a bonus chest that they receive the next time they rank up. If a claimed objective is successfully defended, that contributes a second bonus chest.

Every few world ranks (say, 10 or so), a guild should also be able to unlock special random bonuses, such kitten Alpha Siege Golems or a temporary guild-wide WXP boost. Additionally, improvements to objectives by a high level guild should be more effective. Maybe instead of increasing all base stats by 40 (or whatever it is, can’t remember off the top of my head) they are increased by 50, or 60, or up to 100.

Thoughts?

Take it out back and shoot it.

DeWolfe.2174:

Worried about how this system will empower and favor Guild groups over a Worlds militia. Guild groups already have an advantage as it is. Hoping the dev’s keep this in mind while balancing.

Any organized unit should be markedly more effective than a non-organized unit. Militias have historically been cannon fodder while elite corps actually win the fight. I, for one, would not object to guilds gaining even more importance in WvW. The game is called Guild Wars, not World Wars.

Kodama.6453:

elementalist with as many conjured weapons as possible: 20 weapon skills, 1 heal, 15 utility conjured weapon, 5 elite conjured weapon = 41

Elementalist is the class with the most available skills at the same time, that’s a fact.

If this is your build, I wish you luck. That’s all I really have to say.

It seems to be impossible to scroll through the pages of the elementalist forum and not see at least 4 threads about conjure weapons. I’ve made this suggestion a couple times, but never really fleshed out, so I’d like to proffer my own solution to the rampant frustrations plaguing these skills. I’m going to start by highlighting the problems, then give my solution along with why I believe it would successfully resolve these issues.

Problem #1: Picking up a conjured weapon limits you to one skill bar with one skill bar’s worth of cooldowns. This is why most people use it for one or two skills and then drop it.

Problem #2: Charges and duration times make it exceptionally situational. Guaranteed that someone who puts a conjure skill on their bar is only going to use it in a very specific context. Meanwhile another context may arise that would be perfect for using a different conjure skill, while there isn’t enough room in the skill bar to have it.

Problem #3: The long cooldown is an insurmountable obstacle to effectively using them in fast-paced situations like fights, especially in PvP. Outside of gimmicky builds that abuse certain mechanics, you never see conjured weapons used in such situations.

Solution
My solution has two parts, which I will mention first and explain below. The first part of the solution is to make a conjure weapon kit similar to an engineer kit; the second part of the solution is to make the conjured weapon change dependent on the current elemental attunement. There is, additionally, a third change, to the Conjurer trait, which I will also explain below.

The four conjure weapons (Flame Axe, Earth Shield, Frost Bow, and Lightning Hammer) need to be rolled into a single kit (similar to an engineer kit). The cooldown to equip this kit needs to be either:
a) equal to the cooldown on attunement swaps, with the reduced cooldown benefit from the arcana trait line; or
b) a static (but manageable) duration like 15 seconds or so, adjustable by the Conjurer trait (see below).
No charges will be applied to using the weapons.

The weapon you wield should be dependent on which attunement you’re in, and when you swap attunements your weapon should change. This means, if you’re attuned to fire when you switch to the kit, you get a Flame Axe, and if you change to earth while in the kit the weapon should change to an Earth Shield. The conjured weapon ability cooldowns should not be tied to the kit cooldown, but rather balanced separately.

The weapon you have equipped should give an additional F[x] ability, similar to the variable F[x] skills for an engineer. However, the only ability that should be active at any point is the one for the attunement you’re currently in. They should give an attunement-appropriate aura. For example:
In fire attunement with a conjured weapon, you gain the F1 ability Fire Shield (as Focus fire 5).
In water attunement with a conjured weapon, you gain the F2 ability Frost Aura.
In air attunement …. [so on and so on]

The idea behind this solution is to make the conjured weapon kit a pseudo-attunement, thereby integrating them into the extant class mechanics rather than having them haphazardly stapled onto the core class. Added mechanics like auras add synergy with the build possibilities.

Additionally, the Conjurer trait clearly has to be rethought. It should be moved to the Arcana trait line (preferably at master level to give something useful there now that EA is moving to GM) and increase the duration of auras generated by the conjured weapon F[x] abilities. Perhaps from 3 seconds to 6 seconds, or from 6 seconds to 9 seconds… the actual duration can be played around with. Alternatively, the Conjurer trait could reduce the cooldown on the conjured weapon kit… if it is given a static cooldown rate.

I believe that these changes, if implemented, would significantly increase the usage of conjured weapon abilities and increase their synergy with the overall class.

TL;DR
Make conjured weapons into an attunement-based kit with realistic cooldown.
Move the Conjurer trait to arcana and change it to increase aura duration or reduce kit cooldown.

I’d personally love to see at least two game modes out of this. An 8v8 capture the flag mode similar to the original guild wars, and an all out 12v12 team domination mode with the option to increase the cap to 15v15, 25v25, and 50v50. The TDM mode should have siege equipment permissible.

The recent announcement regarding guild changes raised a question for me about the way I use my personal guild. Like others, I found it more economic to create my own personal guild to allow access to additional storage space. Yes, it would take lots of time and/or gold to accumulate the influence needed to research the storage upgrade, but on my own (and having taken more than a year off playing) I recently completed the second storage upgrade. So the following portion of the announcement has me worried:

In the case of other upgrades that are moving to the new system relatively unchanged, such as the guild banners and the guild vault, we’ll be grandfathering access to those upgrades for any guild that unlocked them in the current system. If your guild had obtained the necessary research level and prerequisites to have consumables like banners or Vault Transport unlocked under the current system, you will have them unlocked to craft in the new system.

Along with the decision to remove the influence currency and spread it among three new factors, this makes me wonder: will I still be able to gradually accumulate the component(s) necessary to make the third guild storage upgrade? Or should I fork out the gold now before HoT comes out so that my bank stuff gets grandfathered over and I’m not left having to pimp out my personal guild to gain the means to upgrade it?

Kodiak.3281:

Pretty stoked and completely surprised how much they listened to.

Same. ANet managed to pull through. Somehow I think if there hadn’t been 876234 threads saying “what the kitten?” they may have thought they could get away with it. But I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that they realized from the first objections that the nerfs were stupid.

So… good job, ANet. You’ve regained some of my faith in your ability to balance the game.

My server would dominate our match-up if the other two servers didn’t gang up on us. On Friday night they each attacked separate gates to our keep in coordination to prevent us from getting an early lead.

Why do I mention this? Because, frankly, I don’t think your suggestion would change these patterns. Your server’s commanders will continue to select their targets based on the match-up composition and whatever alliances are formed between server leaders. My server will continue to be double-teamed because we demolish our enemies in open combat on equal terms.

The only way to really fix it is for enemies to only be called by their rank (e.g. “Gold Raider”) and not their server. Have your team one colour, and other servers a separate, single colour. Essentially, make all enemies identical so that nobody can tell the difference between potential ally and target foe.

As long as it isn’t another tedious jumping puzzle I would be overjoyed at any addition. Maybe a minigame… like a costume brawl but with a unique PvP theme. Or a “king of the hill” set-up where you use special Aspects like in that Zephyrite arena to hold a position on top of a tower and get PvP reward points (like, 2 per tick, 1 tic per second).

Hell, even a short but fun jumping puzzle would be fine… as long as it took you to a daily chest that let you unlock unique PvP only armour and weapon skins. Average queue times on my server are 2-3.5 mins, which I expect is in the upper range, so it can’t be a 5-10 minute jumping puzzle.

Something to appease players’ ADHD… please.

Some of your ideas are interesting, but I fundamentally oppose implementing initiative into the elementalist class. It’s already a broken feature for thieves, and it’s too similar to a mana system that is fortunately absent from GW2.

Also, the proposed change to Sceptre 1 is, honestly, terrible. Its current form is good, it just needs to deal 4-5x the damage, decreasing by half for each target in the line (so if your target is separated by two enemies, they will only receive 25% damage [about what the skill currently does] while the first two enemies receive 100% and 50%).

If a warrior isn’t running Shoutbow nowadays (s)he doesn’t stand a chance. The way that I’ve built my ele… I don’t have to kite to win against them (unless they do a knockdown chain build). The whole class needs to be retooled, a few buffs aren’t going to help.

Terrahero.9358:

Apart from some things that are mechanical bugs and apply to multiple professions that should be looked at, your suggestions are completely unbalanced.

Free no-cooldown weapon swap? Because letting a Thief freely swap around would be totally balanced… Giving them free access to teleports or easy stealth for all weapons is ridiculous.

More health? No way. Thief has stealth, blind, teleports and evades out of the whazoo. They stay alive just fine as full glasscannons because they just straight up don’t get hit (enough).
And Thieves have some of the best condition removal for such a minimal investment. Shadow’s Embrace is overpowered for an adept trait, i am highly surprised this isn’t being moved up to compete for a GM spot with Shadow Rejuv. in the upcomming changes. Because it should.

A free destealth? And let me guess, this would also not trigger revealed right? The one drawback of wanting to attack while stealthed, namely getting revealed so you can’t immediately restealth, shouldnt be bypassed.
And if you find yourself still in Stealth for a few seconds which is stopping you from capping a point, you should’ve planned better.

This.

I agree with you that bugs (Steal, Scorpion Wire, etc.) are in desperate need of being fixed, as they represent core elements of the thief gameplay (especially Steal). I wholeheartedly disagree that thief requires any more buffs at this point. You already get to spam attacks from stealth while I’ve popped an invulnerability and remain invisible until you land one. There’s something patently wrong with seeing:

BlockBlockBlockBlo-BlockBlock-Bl-Blo-Bl-BlockBlock7000

When thieves get some reasonable drawbacks that force them to play tactically rather than spamming their abilities until they are low on initiative, going into stealth, and coming back for round two at their leisure… then you can talk about buffs.

Everyone keeps making topics about RtL.

And I heartily approve.

Fix this kitten, ANet.

AlecFair.1270:

I have actually seen some great warriors and guardians in WvW. Your problem is you just made it like you mentioned. Since WvW is based around gear, traits, and skills an early leveled warrior would fair pretty poorly. I would say get your warrior into late 60s to 80 and you should have a great time with playing close combat classes.

This.

Your warrior may be uplevelled to 80, but your gear stats are certainly not. If I take a low level to WvW, I run around naked because the armour makes zero difference up until maybe level 50, when you can take approximately 5-6 hits rather than 2. It’s a habit I got back when you had to pay to repair armour in WvW.

Also, in general melee builds don’t fare well in a zerg unless you are in the front line. Have you tried being on Teamspeak with the commander(s) on your server? Alternatively, havoc groups may suit you, as there aren’t 10 targets focus firing you from range, there are only 4 or 5 … unless your havoc squad runs into a zerg.