Guild Wars 2

Ision.3207:

Whining about stealth is an MMO forum staple. And it is for the same so-called reasons: “fairness” – “balance” blah blah. No matter the game, WoW, Lotro ect … the outcry against stealth is always there. And in those games, just as with this one, 95% of the time it’s simply a L2P issue by poor to average WvW players who want to solo-roam, but are just not very good at it, no more and no less.

And trying to argue reasonably to a guy that regularly gets stomped in WvW roaming is a dead-end; he’s just furious that his ability to facetank NPCs in PvE does not work on real live people. What he wants is a “short cut” to having to play better, and that short cut is ALWAYS the same two whines, however it may be disguised: 1. spam post and shout that your class does not have enough DPS, and 2. spam post and shout that the other guys class needs a nerf.

The reason stealth classes bear the brunt of the spam posting QQ demanding the other guy needs nerfs is because of the personal nature of it … it’s one thing for a player to die in a zerg blob to another zerg blob … that death is abstract in a sense. But when he tries to test his poor skills vs a single opponent that will dance on his corpse after exposing that he needs to l2p a bit more … it’s personal, and thus you see the emotionally wrought QQ in the forums.

Guys (and especially thieves) you just need to learn to take these type of threads for what they are.

I will grant you that whining about stealth is a staple in many MMOs, but from my experience it has always worked both ways.

1) People without stealth complain about being stealth attacked.
2) People with stealth complain about being countered, or exposed and how it is too easy for other classes to do that.

I have seen a lot of the first, but not nearly as many as the second. Anet also has a stealth system very different than any other MMO.

But in the sake of a healthy argument I would ask you, what changes could Anet make to stealth that would finally make it OP (ideally the smallest change(s) that would finally tip the scale in your mind)?

Fortus,

I really have to applaud your argument, but I do not think much will come out of this thread.

1) Right wrong or indifferent by singling out back stab you have a ton of posts of thieves getting very defensive (which cripples any kind of good solid debate).

2) Look at posts that got Devs attention and feedback
2a) Most were long and thought out, very logical, and brought a lot of numbers or examples.
2b) Allie was there, and she did a good job at providing feedback to salient posts.

3) Even if a dev did hear your plight, and agree it would be at least 3 months before another balance patch, and they may do a CDI first (Tyler Chapman promised a CDI for Elementalists for this year, so you can get an idea on the time tables).

Look I have tried to fight the good fight against the Devs balance and the forum poster (Trolls), in the end I was spending too much time on the forums or in game gathering data and not enough having fun which is what a game is supposed to be about.

I decided it was better for me to just leave for another game and pop my head back in every once and a while (really easy when GW2 has super big patches several months apart).

One day I am sure they will have class balance, they have changed so much of this game since launch, and they are not afraid to turn a lot of systems upside down in search for a better experience. I am, however, sure that such a fix will not be here anytime soon, at best 3 months, but I suspect much longer at this rate of patching.

Allie,

Good luck on your new position. I was so thrilled when you opened up the Ranger CDI and the feedback you gave to the community. I hope ArenaNet can keep your momentum.

I voted,

I had to put Ranger as #1, I mean their core class mechanic (pet) needs a lot of love, we at least have D/D.

Ele as #2, just because the rangers are in a terrible place does not mean we do not need a lot of love as well (especially the staff).

Necro as #3 (in PvE), in all of those world events and even some PUG dungeons I always cringe when I see 25 stacks of bleeding on a target and think how terrible would it be if the game nullified all of my damage. Even on Carrion we still have power for some decent DD DPS.

1) Ranger (and my primary is an elementalist).
2) Elementalist (In particular the staff needs a lot of love).
3) Necromancer (particularly in PvE)

Carighan.6758:

Mesmer Greatsword? I mean I know that inwards of 600 it deals less AA-damage than the Scepter, but I think there’s more to say about AAs than “too weak”.

For example the Scepter AA is ok in the total damage it deals, but for two problems:

1. It’s way too slow.
2. It’s damage depends on range, and it gains a lot from being in melee. This is a bug related to the advance of as chain, and should really be fixed.

The scepter’s raw strength is fine. And though the secondary effect is somewhat boring, the 2 and 3 skills are strong enough to make that specific part balanced.

Likewise the GS is weak when close, but it’s clearly not meant to be used when close. And since it’s attack can hit multiple targets, it can actually deal a ton of damage with it’s autoattack. Just use it as a ranged weapon, and don’t target the frontline enemy.

The DPS for Greatsword was listed for the 0-300 range. it is 249 at max range, 214 at range (600- 900) and 174 in between 300-600.

The scepters DPS is really terrible though, and there is no way around it

I would like to see the elementalist match their description in GW2 or the Description updated.

“Elementalists are multi-faceted spellcasters that channel elemental forces, making fire, air, earth, and water do their bidding. What they lack in physical toughness, they make up in versatility and the ability to inflict massive damage in a single attack.”
Thieves inflict massive damage in single attacks, Elementalists do not. We inflict massive damage by button mashing.

Air

“By harnessing wind and lightning, elementalists can target specific foes with focused, high-damage attacks.”
(not on staff, and scepter DPS is sub-par).

Water

“Elementalists can chill their foes with ice and rejuvenate their allies with water.”
While we can chill, they are typically on long cooldown (there is also no chill on scepter, and water trident is fairly laughable healing).

Earth

“Elementalists can cause the ground under their feet to come to their aid, turn flesh to stone, destabilize foes with seismic shocks, or trigger volcanic eruptions”.
Turning flesh to stone? I missed that one.

Conjure Spells

Elementalists use conjure spells to summon useful items and potent weapons that can be used by allies or themselves. For example, Conjure Flame Axe creates a fiery axe that can be hurled at an enemy.
Useful items and potent weapons, maybe they wrote the description before they created earth shield. Flame axe is also fairly weak since it is not really much stronger than our normal skills. I will grant lightning hammer, FGS, and Frost bow (I still want confusion back on the frost bow, I never knew why they removed it).

Either that or have Anet put 2 disclaimers on the Elementalist when you create one:

1) It should state that you are now playing GW2 on hard mode, and will probably need to remap your keyboard.

2) If you think this class is the quintisental mage like in other games, you will be disappointed. The elementalist has the durability of a full caster with powers of a hybrid (the closest class I can think of would be the Bard in DnD, but with the durability of the wizard).

I am a longtime Elementalist and I admit I am a bit torn on this issue.

1) The staff really does not need any nerfs (of the 20 skills on the staff only about 6-8 are worth using).
2) any AOE that does damage should have red circles (and probably have a very reasonable animation/cast time)
3) when those meteors fall, it is not exactly very subtle… (but someone pointed out that it can be difficult to figure out if they are friendly meteors or the rude ones).

Overall I think it should get red circles, but I think they should fix a couple skills on the staff like aiming gust and lightning surge while they are looking at it.

Ancient Ranger.3276:

Snow.2048:

How to separate?
I think this is fairly clear, but there are multiple posts (and not many new ideas sadly =/). I think base health should be equalized (simply because I have no idea how to balance a few hundred vitality. It has no true opposite, and is more of less just a sponge anyway), which people disagree with. Give me a better idea so I can shower you with virtual confetti and call you the true savoir of tyria. Or if you want, answer my little question that I probably have asked and will ask many times before this is over “How much vitality is a dodge worth (or evasion, invul, etc)?” Give me a run down, and show me the truth.

Armor is a bit of a difficult point in the discussion. I thought, let’s just take the opposites, double check the skill modifiers and call it a day. This doesn’t seem to make many people happy though.
What are the pro’s and con’s of leaving it alone, equalizing it, balancing it with power or -insert your idea-. If you are convinced you are right, then convince me If you do that you get full credit here, as is due [you’ll find I’m pretty easy to convince as long as your logic is solid and your math + ideas are good]. Then we can get on to the hard part, which is trying to prove that point to everyone else.

But I guess I should stop here and get some answers posted! Anyway, thanks for reading.

-To answer your question: “How much vitality is a dodge worth (or evasion, invul, etc)?”
-My answer: Depends.
-Reasoning: Dodges,invul,evasion,ect or only as good as the skill they are used against plus the amount of damage you do while that “block” is happening.
(Assuming I will hit a 3k firegrab)
-Example1: I firegrab X-person they dodge. That dodge is worth 3k damage.
-Example2: I firegrab Y-person(a mesmer) They use sword 2 on me dealing 2k damage. That evasion is worth 5k damage(3k evasion from my firegrab and 2k from thier hit).

I do believe in the fact that they gave different armor values to different types of classes(light, mediums, heavies). I could believe in the fact that wants different starting health pools if the difference was not so drastic.
The way the health pools look now is
Low:10805
Medium:15082
High:18372.
If they looked more like this I would not be so objective to them
Low:13000
Medium:15000
High:17000

Currently The difference between High and Low tier in health pools is 7567 which in turn relates to 756.7 Vitality. With my proposed health pools the difference is only 4000 which in turn relates to 400 vitality.

I advocate different health pools but no difference between stats. If the devs had initially set everyones HP equal and had tradeoffs in armor like in GW1 no one would would take a suggestion to just give certain classes significantly more durability seriously.

I.e. If I state that Elementalist should be given 550 more power and condition damage because they are a DPS class and their description states they sacrificed durability for increased damage, how well do you think that would go over? If Thieves should be given 350 more Power and Precision?

I think putting a numeric stat value on mechanics like stealth or clones etc. is just too hard. Class’ actives should be balanced, so instead of putting a vitality difference on stealth one should compare the different active skills or dimensions of a class (i.e. the CC ability, DPS, Regen, Blocks, etc.)

nicknamenick.2437:

I would be happy to trade 500 vit on my warr.

No problem!

But can i have some teleport skills also?
Healing on weapon skills?
Some stealth?
Maby some mini warriors around me
Protection?
More blinds?
Ow and ofc less obvious animations with shorter casttime skills..

When you give all classes same base health you would have to nerf/buff so much more, making it just more difficult to balance around.

leap attacks are essentially teleports, and you already have high mobility. So sure, a utility teleport with 40 second cooldown, but rush (and other charging attacks) will have double cooldown on miss (with standard cooldown being at least 20 seconds).

I think warriors should definitely have healing on weapon skills. Join the staff elementalist, warhorn Call to Arms could do AOE 8 seconds of regen and remove a condition on a 40 second cooldown. Healing signet would need to be rebalanced to heal ~200 health per attack skill used.

stealth, sure blinding arrow will create a smoke field, you can combo explosion arrow for stealth. There you go.

Mini warrriors- well if thieves get thieves guild, I think warriors should get Guild WARs. Not too much different than char warband and whatnot.

Protection sure – Balance stance now grants 6 seconds of stability and protection, but is on a 90 second timer (and is still a stun breaker).

more blinds, it is already on longbow. I suppose you could get a utility with blind, how about the Fear Me can be your blind. I never understood why warriors got fear anyway. It will be AOE and be down to a 30 second recharge.

Be careful what you wish for you just may get it. I tried to balance the warrior with the closest approximation of elementalist skills (mostly because I am most familiar with that class).

I have both an Elementalist and a Mesmer and here are my thoughts on the matter:

Playing an elementalist is playing GW2 on hard mode. You will have roughly the same DPS of other classes, but require 2-4x the number of buttons to push. In PvE where enemies are very stupid they shine really well. In roaming in WvW you are a walking loot bag to many builds and will struggle with many 1v1 fights; however, in a zerg you can really turn the tide of battle (if you live long enough).

Playing a Mesmer is a little like playing a game of chess, they will use their abilities less often, but have to wait for the optimal time. In PvE they can solo very well, but they give less support to the group they are in. In WvW roaming, they can win 1v1’s most of the time and sometimes 1v2’s or 1v3 if you are really good, but suffer in the fact that some classes can just outright disengage you and run away.

Both classes are a higher risk classes that I feel get a greater return on power with better player skill.

I play a staff ele. Solo can be a bit hard, but if you bring earth elementals soloing in PvE is really easy (even the lesser earth golem will work well). I am running carrion, and I essentially just bleed everything to death with eruption/ burn with signet of fire (keep in mind that 1200 range is outside of agro and they do not react until they are hit, not when you put it under their feet).

keep in mind that eruption has a delay, so you need to be in earth first then switch to the field you want to combo.

also if you are going condition consider bringing the frost bow, freezing (5) then ice storm (4) will pretty much bleed most creatures to death.

If I had to think of the biggest difference between staff and dagger it would be the staff gambles on a few big hitting spells, while the DD is spamming hard hit spells out. the general pace should slow down.

Wintel.4873:

I think this is mainly just an issue with Elementalists.

While I do agree that the variance between base hp is huge, classes have been balanced with defensive mechanics to make up for their low base health. Thieves have stealth + evasion + stuns and guardians have blocks + high armor + strong heals.

Meanwhile Elementalists seem to have nothing other than 1-2 extremely weak healing skills in the water tree, that’s it. I think it’s time that Ele’s were boosted up to 15k base health. It would be a HUGE help in PvE to stop getting insta-gibbed by elite mobs. The number of times I’ve been downed due to an unforseeable damage is ridiculous.

It’s not funny watching warriors laugh in the face of the kind of damage that would destroy an Ele.

They posted a response on a ranger balance thread, as long as we keep it constructive, we may just get one.

It would be nice to get some insight into the Devs if they even want to go this route. They could save us a lot of time saying that they feel the current stat distribution is in a good place and have no intention on changing a core mechanic. Or they could push us in another direction, I mean when they raise the level cap (I believe they mentioned it was a possibility) the stat differential is only going to grow.

Until then I am still waiting for the CDI topic of class balance.

Ancient Ranger.3276:

Shadowfall.6543:

Snow.2048:

Hi all =)

Tl;dr Passive = Passive; Active = active. Don’t balance to achieve active = active while passive =/= passive. Base stats are a relic from different game modes that unnecessarily complicate balance.

“What the OP wants is that Passive abilities should be balanced by other passive abilities while actives balance out other actives.
Translation:
1) the warrior should not have 500 – 1100 more stat points than other characters, he can have 500 more vitatity that’s ok, but other classes get 500 somewhere else.
2) The warriors actives on the other hand should be as powerful (but different) than stealth/ clones/ etc.”
-Shadowfall.6543

@Ozii, The OP is not advocating for everyone at the same health, just not 500-1100 more stat points. Thieves should not get 800 more vitality and 100 more armor, but should get those 900 points and then the actives will be looked at to see if there is a huge disparity.

-The actually range in Stat point difference is 151-1060.7(ascended level). The 151 is Thief to Elementalist difference and the 1060.7 is Warrior to Elementalist difference. That is only if A-Net is looking at the Elementalist as the base.
-If they are looking at lets say Engineer or Ranger as base( both medium armor and health) then the difference between the Ranger and Elementalist is 578.7 and the difference between Warrior and Ranger is 482.
-Now lets list all the Starting Stat difference of each class to the Elementalist(Turning Armor into Toughness and Starting Health-Pool into Vitality).
-Warrior to Elementalist: 1060.7
-Guardian to Elementalist: 304
-Engineer to Elementalist: 578.7
-Ranger to Elemenatlist: 578.7
-Thief to Elementalist: 151
-Necromancer to Elementalist: 756.7
-Mesmer to Elementalist: 427.7

Good catch, I will try to use 550 stat points or the full range from now on (550 being the average, 578 being the mode).

Snow.2048:

Hi all =)

Tl;dr Passive = Passive; Active = active. Don’t balance to achieve active = active while passive =/= passive. Base stats are a relic from different game modes that unnecessarily complicate balance.

“What the OP wants is that Passive abilities should be balanced by other passive abilities while actives balance out other actives.
Translation:
1) the warrior should not have 500 – 1100 more stat points than other characters, he can have 500 more vitatity that’s ok, but other classes get 500 somewhere else.
2) The warriors actives on the other hand should be as powerful (but different) than stealth/ clones/ etc.”
-Shadowfall.6543

@Ozii, The OP is not advocating for everyone at the same health, just not 500-1100 more stat points. Thieves should not get 800 more vitality and 100 more armor, but should get those 900 points and then the actives will be looked at to see if there is a huge disparity.

oZii.2864:

Shadowfall.6543:

snip

Lets remove my example of Elementalist then. Lets apply this to thief, necromancer, mesmer. Is it that easy to just give everyone higher base vitality and armor? Nothing else needs to be balanced just bump everyone up to the same?

[…]

I am not advocating everyone having normalized HP and armor, I advocate everyone has an equal number of stats. Warriors may get a boost to HP and Armor for being warriors, but other classes would get bonuses elsewhere (i.e. Thieves may get bonus to precision and power, Necromancers to condition damage, etc.).

You are already making the point that some actives are very strong, and do you agree that some actives are worth more than 500 – 1100 stat points? Does death shroud = 200 more armor for the warrior + adrenaline?

Also for condition removal I think you will be surprised at how little a base elementalist has. switching attunements does nothing without traits. And Speaking of traits excluding them from calculations is favoring the warrior a bit since they have some of the strongest traits (i.e. all of the 20% weapon cool downs give something else).

Shadowfall.6543:

Andele.1306:

Nutshel.7264:

[snip]

I was just testing a concept on warrior, in about than 5 seconds they can burst for over 20k + (this is in PvP too, on a quick build) (Bolo, rush, 100b, switch to rifle and f1).

if the target does not have an ability to remove immobization they eat the entire combo (which can be facerolled as rush has a long range). not to mention this burst is on a 20 second cool down, ele’s burst is on a higher one.

The elementalist DPS is just never going to be leaps and bounds beyond other classes. And consider if those builds went up against each other what would happen, the elementalist would die (most do not have 20k+ HP, this warrior build had almost 20k).

What? That’s spreadsheet PvP. That requires no condition removal and no available block, blind, endurance, invuln, Stun/Daze, weakness, evade. Who doesn’t take condition removal and who doesn’t have any of those things available to them?

Have you seen what a S/D Ele can do in 5 seconds? Sure it’s gimmicky but so is what you described.

Any PvE guru will point out that a Warrior doesn’t out damage a Elementalist in theoretical damage the Warrior is just easier to perform but the Warrior is the pick up and play class of Guild Wars 2. You don’t see Lightning Hammer D/F or S/x Ele’s in PvP and you don’t see GS+Bola+Rifle Warriors either.

I have spent quite a bit of time playing the Elementalist (since beta actually). I have recently started playing a warrior, and I am able to do more damage, much more CC, and live longer then my elementalist. I have seen some very good elementalists out there and they are a force to be reckoned with, but that is because GW2 rewards player skill. Their class is not awesome, they are awesome players:

the key to being an elementalist is memorizing the other classes attack animations, intelligently mashing buttons, and a really solid internet connection. (Oh did I mention you Will need to remap your keyboard for that class).

If they played another class with that kind of skill they would probably also be unbeatable (think of what they could do as a Mesmer).

Guild wars 2 guru might state Elementalist have higher theoretical damage, but in competitive play (and even most PvE) an elementalist Cannot run beserkers, while a warrior can.

I was not originally a huge advocate that warriors were OPed, I figured it was the grass was really greener on the other side. I did not come to that conclusion until I started playing the class. So go ahead, I challenge you pick up the Elementalist, play them for a while. Make sure to get to at least lvl 30 – 40 when monsters start hitting back hard or just go into PvP.

However we are drifting far from the original topic that classes should not be balanced around Passives equaling active abilities. That is what the OP is trying to get at, if you want to continue the debate, feel free to start another post and I will debate you to your hearts content.

Chaosbroker.3860:

Given how mob AI in the game works currently any discussion of a Warrior’s relative strength in PvE is sort of irrelevant since their inherent weaknesses lie in an opponent’s ability to avoid attacks.

As a side note I do tend to see “But Warriors can change their build to do pretty much anything” as a go to argument for Warriors being OP. Given the fact that A-net has said they want all classes to have viable options in any role, how does that keep coming back as an acceptable argument?

The simple fact is just that Warriors as a class are closer to that goal than other classes, and that’s a flaw with other classes rather than the Warrior itself.

All classes viable in every roll…

so Thief tanks?
Rangers… without petting zoo?
Elementalists control?

Currently warriors being OP since they can do anything is still a good argument because other classes are pigeon held into certain rolls and excluded from others. The warrior is not only able to fulfill every role, but is normally the top 1-3 in all roles while maintaining good to excellent durability.

Andele.1306:

Nutshel.7264:

@oZii.2864
you talk about warrior and ele alot, now it looks kinda like this:
warrior in zerker gear got 20k hp ele in pvt/knights got about 17k. Warrior hits ele for 7.5k eviscerates and 5k triple chops. Said ele can combo warrior(when stability is finaly down) for about 8k and that puts most of skills on cd. That might not seem so bad(it is). But if ele geared like said warrior that 7.5k hit would probably be closer to 10k which is what would be hp of that ele in zerker gear.

Other example: Warriors and eles got similar mobility one little better then other but lets say its marginal for sake of argument.
Imagine warrior being jumped by 2 other players he tanks the few hits, pops 2 cooldowns and maybe gets away with 3k hp.
In same situation ele would not even get to pop his cds(zerker) because of ultra high burst that is currently present in this game, the ele could go bunker gear but then his damage output would be minimal and survivability only barely better then that of zerker warrior(if at all).

The point is, with current game design of high damage, classes with with low health pool are at major disadvantage unless they can “diappear” if need be(thief, mesmer) – though if caught off guard same holds true. Balancing low health with in combat sustain simply doesn’t work if you can die in one or 2 hits.

Except the fact that eles have 16k burst rotations with 5/8 skills/traits used being auto targeted that can be done in less time than a full triple chop to evisce combo… not that warrior damage and invuls (or cc and regen) doesnt need to be nerfed (it does, or be given to the necro), its just you really got the tools to make up for the effective hp deficit.

I was just testing a concept on warrior, in about than 5 seconds they can burst for over 20k + (this is in PvP too, on a quick build) (Bolo, rush, 100b, switch to rifle and f1).

if the target does not have an ability to remove immobization they eat the entire combo (which can be facerolled as rush has a long range). not to mention this burst is on a 20 second cool down, ele’s burst is on a higher one.

The elementalist DPS is just never going to be leaps and bounds beyond other classes. And consider if those builds went up against each other what would happen, the elementalist would die (most do not have 20k+ HP, this warrior build had almost 20k).

oZii.2864:

I don’t know if I agree with this because I don’t feel like it’s that simple. This came up in the Elementalist forums before and I put together a example of what I think it would look like. This just a copy of my post from that discussion.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.0|8.5n.h2.8.5n.0.d13.0.d14|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|1g.71m.1g.71m.1n.71m.1g.71m.1n.71m.1g.71m.0.0.0.0.0.0|2t.d1d.2v.d14.3v.d17.2v.d1d.2t.0.2v.d13|p68.f1.k68.0.a2|6f.1|1n.1u.1v.1s.28|e

Take this build but give the elementalist Warrior base stats and you end up with the following:

Power 2313 (no might stacks) 2663(easy 10 stacks of might)
35% chance to crit (no fury) 55% crit chance with fury (via zephyr’s boon)
83 critical damage
Warrior modified Armor = 3066 (3186 while attuned to earth)
Warrior modified Health = 19182

I am almost certain that if Ele’s HP was raised the condition management option we have now would be nerfed hard.

The ele can do alot of damage raising the hp would allow ele’s to make more mistakes therefore be more effective because we can afford to face tank damage to apply our own damage we wouldn’t need to be as careful. That is fits warriors theme of heavy armor high vit/necromancer’s attrition style play/guardian is surviving through magic but still front line heavy armor.

HP increase I think would see healing nerfed, condition removal nerfed, vigor nerfed.

I obviously would slot ether renewal, cleansing flame, probably arcane shield, and lightning flash. I still have heal on dagger 2 and 5 for sustain. The values of some heals would have to be brought up to compensate for the higher health pool. Or do you remove Eles sustain on it’s weapons skills and replace it with other skills since it now has higher health and armor? This starts to make the Ele more into a Warrior just a little different.

This would be fun to play like that but I would probably kill just about everything out there when I think of the damage I could do with that and no fear of conditions because I could handle conditions well but do a ton of damage.

TL&DR: I think it is much more complicated given the different ways the classes play now. It isn’t just that simple as making the bases stats the same. End result could be alot of very similar classes once balancing was done.

I have a couple of counter points.

1) I still think most people on this thread do not necessarily support setting all HP and Armor =, we just do not want to see classes getting 500-1100 extra stat points. And consider that once passives are normalized actives will need to be examined as well.

2) If we did, do you really think that build with that armor and HP would be all that broken. You talk about the condition cleanse of a elementalist is overpower… have you played a warrior they have many condition removals, better access to stability, and essentially immunity to immobilization, with only 5 seconds of swapping between weapons (that means they can swap as often as an elementalist…)

3) you really think that extra HP and Armor will allow an elementalist to face tank? I agree that it will allow elementalist a little more room for error, but right now most builds have 0 room for error (which is why so many have to use vitality armor and a lot of water).

4) If you have an elementalist and a warrior I really challenge you to play a zerker in both and compare (expecially in WvW or PvP). I think you will find both kill at roughly the same rate, but the warrior lives much longer. Also compare the relative difference in skill and coordination required for the same effect.

Einlanzer.1627:

Shadowfall, that’s very useful information and shows exactly what I’m referring to. However, I suspect if you pulled info just from the wiki it also doesn’t take aftercast into effect. Is that so? The aftercast is a problem on a lot of (especially ranged) #1 skills, causing the rate of fire to be painfully slow for the damage dealt, which affects the DPS on a lot of those skills a lot more than you would think by just looking at the cast time.

At any rate, the autoattacks need to be balanced within the context of other skills and traits and such, I get that, but it’s totally preposterous that one has a DPS of 80 while another has a DPS of 800. That’s exactly why it’s a problem. I feel like their design team overtly ignores autoattacks because they want to fix weapons without relying on them, but that makes zero sense. It’s very, very obvious that weapons need to have roughly equivalent #1 skills for them to ever feel very balanced.

The Wiki had some after casts I included them were available. I intend to eventually use a program like bandicam to capture and record frames.

I am gathering information in preparation of the CDI on class balance, and I want some nice solid numbers backing me up. It is however a lot of work, so I went quick and dirty.

Axialbloom.8109:

Atherakhia.4086:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Atherakhia.4086:

Thief sustained is higher.

Bull. Thiefs are pretty low on the sustain once Hide in Shadows is used. They have to back off if their opponent isn’t low.

Thief avoidance is higher.

About even, actually. Thieves may have more Evades, but Warriors match that with (significantly longer) blocks and invulnerabilities.

We know that the Thief’s DPS is second highest in the game right behind an Ele. So yes, their sustained is much higher than a Warrior.

Thieves have stealth. In any given fight you’re in stealth for much more than the 3 seconds a Warrior has endure pain up.

Elementalists only have great DPS against giant targets that stand still, i.e PvE bosses.

Thank you axial, I saw that comment and really wondered.

I would also point out what an Elementalist has to do to get that DPS:
Particular runes, sigils, a really wonky ineffective trait lineup and berserker’s (so the elementalist has 14k hp assuming 20 in water). Plus the big component, playing the keyboard like a concert pianist.

It is much easier for a warrior to out DPS almost every Elementalist since melee skills have 2 to 3 times the DPS as ranged (plus most competitive Elementalist builds require survivability first, even on a berserker build). I would put the next highest burst DPS class as the warrior and the highest sustained as the warrior.

killahmayne.9518:

Bombsaway.7198:

I agree. The more armor you have, the less damage you should be able to do.

That is a pretty gross oversimplification. Armor is only a portion of what is “survivability” and arguably isn’t even the most important stat or mechanic for surviving.

Remember, the warrior when it came out had more damage then it does now and had the most armor (still has the most armor alongside Guardian) and they were still nowhere to be seen in the meta.

Which means it isn’t as black and white as you and other people paint it. If people demand that every class have equal health/armor then I wish to have equal amounts of evades and stealth as thieves/mesmers.

What the OP wants is that Passive abilities should be balanced by other passive abilities while actives balance out other actives.

Translation:

1) the warrior should not have 500 – 1100 more stat points than other characters, he can have 500 more vitatity that’s ok, but other classes get 500 somewhere else.

2) The warriors actives on the other hand should be as powerful (but different) than stealth/ clones/ etc.

We are working on the passives first as they are much easier to balance and are very readily not balanced. Balancing actives will take a little more time as they are trickier, but the current system has the warrior with 900 more stat points balancing out stealth. That is not a really good system (i.e. what did the elementalist trade for 1100 stat points).

Sarrs.4831:

Aren’t all Elementalist and Engineer 1s kind of lackluster by their nature as a class which has access to many possible 2/3/4/5s at once? It would definitely be nice if those 1s could be brought up to be usable skills, and judged more on their impact as a time investment than as a skill you fall back on once you run out of CDs (which won’t happen if you’re playing these classes properly).

As for the Engineer I might give some kind of consideration since they can instantly equip and remove their kits, and their attack skills have very reasonable cooldowns. I know I have been known to switch into grenade kit use the one(s) I wanted and switch out. However keep in mind that kits are optional items, they are not part of every engineer build nor should they be required (they should be stronger on rifle and pistol).

As for the elementalist I very much disagree. Yes the elementalist can be played like a concert pianist, and it is currently the most effective (the only competitive) way to play. However, if you really want to allow an elementalist stay in 1 attunement or bounce between two, they have to have something to do while they are waiting for their 30-50 second cooldowns to expire.

Also for the Elementalist they have some of the worst (actually the worst auto attacks on the staff). Also those other skills are not as powerful as you would think. let’s do a simple comparison: warrior smacking around a target with a sword and an elementalist in fire going nuts, lets take 10 seconds of damage:

Warrior Damage for 10 seconds 8040 (after the bleeds he puts in that 10 seconds expire).

Elementalist: assume the elementalist can get the target to stand on 2 lava fonts, that is 2416 damage (assume total casting time is 1 second due to targeting and after cast).
Sets the target on fire with flame burst for 1640 damage over 5 seconds (.5 casting time with .5 to .75 aftercast). Casts meteor shower assume 1/4 of the 24 meteors hit (typical of standard sized targets) is another 2886 damage with 4.5 seconds of casting. that leaves enough time for 2 castings of fire ball and you get another 628 damage. That is about 10 seconds of mad clicking (meteor swarm is also now on a 30 second cooldown and lava font will be unavailable for another 2 seconds).

All of the hard work is a total of 7570 damage in 10 seconds or 757 DPS, which the elementalist cannot sustain. (before you mention the other elements any elementalist will tell you other elements have less DPS and you just locked yourself out of your best weapon for 9-16 seconds).

I am not nessisarily advocating for increasing the auto attack damage on all weapons, but on ones with notably lower DPS’s (Ele staff, Ranger Greatsword) they should be really scrutinized to ensure they are not too weak, or other weapons like the warrior axe and sword that they are not too strong. Expecially if one classes auto attack DPS is greatly higher than other classes with similar weapons (guardian GS at 414 DPS, warrior GS at 355 DPS and Ranger at 252).

For the Mesmer (only 4 total)

The Best DD DPS is the sword at 323 DPS
The Best total DPS is the Staff if it procs Burning for 325 DPS.
The Worst DD DPS is the staff at 82 DPS (also if it procs vulnerability)
Note that the scepter and greatsword are at 151 and (144 DPS at 0-300, 174 at 300-600, and 214 at 600-900, and 249 at max range)

For the Necromancer (3 total)

The Axe is 205 DPS
The Staff is 176 DPS
The Scepter is 135 DD DPS and 360 total DPS

The Ranger:
The Best DD DPS is the sword at 355 DPS
The Best total DPS is the swortbow at 485 if the ranger procs bleed.
The Worst DPS is the Axe at 168 DPS or the Longbow at 0-500 (137 DPS) or 500-1000 (176 DPS).
Note that the longbow is only a solid choice at the max distance of 1000+ at a DPS of 248, but that is the same DPS as the shortbow without bleed.
Also note that the Ranger Greatsword is the Worst melee DPS at 252 (ranges 120 – 150), the next worst is 323 DPS

The Thief: (4 total)

The pistol, 163 DPS
The Shortbow, 195 DPS
The Dagger, 367 DD DPS, and 529 total DPS
The sword, 387 DPS

The Warrior:
Longbow 178 DPS
Mace and Greatsword 347 and 355 DPS
Hammer 404 DPS
Rifle 161 DD DPS and 427 total DPS (With bleed)
Axe 490 DPS
Sword 379 DD DPS and 804 total DPS (with bleeds)
The sword has the highest total DPS of the game of 804, with one of the better DD DPS’s

Edited to correct misprint of Mesmers Greatsword, I did not state damages at greater ranges)

I have actually calculated the DPS of all of the auto attacks (from information on the wiki and some of it may surprise you). Please note this is the base DPS and does not take into account scaling (different weapons scale differently with power becoming even better). Please use this for general comparison purposes.

For the Elementalist:

The Best Direct Damage (DD_ attacks are the Dagger Fire and Air at 378 and 409 DPS.
The Best DPS with conditions is: Scepter Earth and Fire at 482 and 492 DPS.
The Worst DD are actually the Scepter Fire and Earth at 66 and 79.
The Worst total DPS is Staff water and Staff Earth at 82 and 137.
I would like to note that the staff Fireball is DPS of 224 and is the best on the staff with air weighing in at 174

For the Engineer:

The *Best*DD DPS is: Bombs at 442 (The next is the repair kit at 337)
The Best total DPS is also Bombs at 442 (the second best is the Tranq gun at 361)
The Worst DD DPS is: tied between Pistol and Tranq gun at 157 DPS
The Worst total DPS is: The Grenade kit (without the extra grenade). With it (DPS 321), the worst weapons are the pistol and the rifle at 271 and 279 DPS.
The flamethrower actually has a respectable total DPS of 318 DPS due to 1 second of burning, 191 without burning.)

For the Guardian: none of their auto attacks inflict conditions.

The Best DPS skills are: The Greatsword, Sword, and hammer at 414 DPS, 417 DPS, and 420 DPS
The Worst DPS is the staff at 222
I would like to note that the scepter is the best 1200 DD ranged attack at 280 DPS

Continued in the next post…

Snow.2048:

[… stuff]

@Shadowfall or Tim if they get back before I do, I have run out of time but you both bring up excellent points and I will respond tonight. You both have got me thinking, and make me want to review my idea tonight as well. So, after responding to you guys, the OP might get changed if I have time. Particularly my poor usage of passive and what my then seemed logical skill function will be targets of a change, but also any new conclusions drawn from the discussion thus far will be added. Hopefully I can format the OP better as well.

Thank you all once again

@snow, no problem.

I am looking forwards to when they put class balance as a CDI topic. With any hope we can work on some idea’s before then.

Stogzlol.4795:

Shadowfall.6543:

Karl McLain.5604:

Profession Changes

[… stuff]

Warrior:
Our changes for warrior focus on providing telegraphs to stronger skills and to reduce the passive benefit gained from Healing Signet.

• Healing Signet: Reduced the passive heal by 8%.
  • We’re looking for ways to incentivize using Healing Signet’s active without increasing overall sustain. We’d love to hear your thoughts on this.
• Pin Down: Added a telegraph animation to the skill. Increased the cast time from 1/4 second to 3/4 second.

I have an idea for healing signet that harkens back to the GW1 roots:

Passive: heal x HP per second (whatever it is currently healing for), but take double damage from physical attacks (reduce toughness/ armor by x% or x magnitude).

Active: Heal (x * 16) over the next 8 seconds (should be about 6000, so about 1.2k a second), but turns off the double damage. (the reason for x* 16 over 8 seconds is if they take 20% off signets will increase the efficacy of the active).

In this setup the warriors gain no more sustainability, but turns off a negative of the passive. There is also 2 reasons to use the active since it gets rid of double damage and does not give less healing. This should also make some of the other warrior healing skills more appealing by giving healing signet a downside.

I’m not a warrior so keep that in mind as I say this. But the double damage idea is too much. As much as I would like to see healing signet useless, this would be absolute over kill. I don’t think added a debuff to a heal is ideal for any professions heal. Essentially, so proactive play needs to be added to the heal. As I’ve read countless times, HS is rewarding warriors without any skill or effort. Add that skill and effort by making it on hit instead of a steady per second. I am not familiar with every single professions healing options, however, I don’t know of any profession aside from warrior that is gaining hp/s without any proactive effort.

When I wrote double damage that was a reference to the warriors in GW1, a % of toughness reduction or just a flat toughness reduction (say -500 toughness) would work. The Devs could do the math to figure out the best approach. The thing that matters is that having a relatively serious drawback to Healing signet, with an active to get rid of it would turn a passive ability into an active.

Now instead of never hitting that button the warrior would have to choose… hmm now that I have taken 10k damage should I use the active heal to keep me going or just duck and cover to wait things out. Now hitting the button is now an active choice, because hitting the button gives them the same healing power and faster, but with the knowledge that there is going to be some downtime of no heals.

Karl McLain.5604:

Profession Changes

[… stuff]

Warrior:
Our changes for warrior focus on providing telegraphs to stronger skills and to reduce the passive benefit gained from Healing Signet.

• Healing Signet: Reduced the passive heal by 8%.
  • We’re looking for ways to incentivize using Healing Signet’s active without increasing overall sustain. We’d love to hear your thoughts on this.
• Pin Down: Added a telegraph animation to the skill. Increased the cast time from 1/4 second to 3/4 second.

I have an idea for healing signet that harkens back to the GW1 roots:

Passive: heal x HP per second (whatever it is currently healing for), but take double damage from physical attacks (reduce toughness/ armor by x% or x magnitude).

Active: Heal (x * 16) over the next 8 seconds (should be about 6000, so about 1.2k a second), but turns off the double damage. (the reason for x* 16 over 8 seconds is if they take 20% off signets will increase the efficacy of the active).

In this setup the warriors gain no more sustainability, but turns off a negative of the passive. There is also 2 reasons to use the active since it gets rid of double damage and does not give less healing. This should also make some of the other warrior healing skills more appealing by giving healing signet a downside.

I completely agree with you, I have been making this same argument for a while now. There are a couple of other items to consider.

1) Currently there is no penalty or tradeoff for wearing heavy armor (not that the classes have a choice) but in Guild Wars 1 the different armor classes meant a lot, but in this game heavy armor is just plain better. (I am not saying they should move slower, but I agree with you that a power boost equal to the toughness deficit is a great idea).

2) I do not know if they should normalize health (they did in GW1 and I think it balanced things nicely, but many games do not). I do not think most people want it balanced (however they need to do something, because you are right if they gave thieves 500-800 more power, or Guardians 500-800 more toughness how many people would consider that OP, and that is exactly what they did with Warriors and Necromancers).

2a) I play an Elementalist and in general I play a lot of squishy characters in other games. I actually enjoy being a glass cannon, I just think in the Elementalist case they kept the glass, but removed my cannon (fragile, but many other classes have >= DPS with more durability). The key to being a glass cannon is having DPS that is way above and beyond what a tank can dish out, but being fragile if anyone actually focuses on you.

2b) What they should balance is something like this: the time and skill it takes 1 class to kill another should be equal for most loadouts. What that would translate to would be if 1 class has 2 times the health of another in PVT armor, then the class with 1/2 the health would do 2 times the damage (in a very simple example). There should also be more of an advantage for skills that are hard to land (i.e. if a target eats a full Lava font it should feel much like eating a full 100 blades (right now lava font is 60% the damage with a lower skill coefficient and requires the target to stay still .5 more seconds.)

3) PvE needs some tweaks as well. One reason there is a huge DPS and Health deficit is champion monsters are walls of Hitpoints and hit like a truck, but have very slow attack animations that are easily dodgable (many times without vigor), but WvW / PVP is very different. Just think about some skills/builds that are awesome in PvE that you wouldn’t use in WvW or PvP.

4) The deficit between Ranged and Melee weapons damage is also a huge problem. When melee weapons DPS can be 2-3 times ranged weapons, it is very hard to balance the classes. I understand that there is risk in landing melee attacks (kiting, counter attacks, etc.), but there are a lot of ranged attacks that are very hard to land on opponents that are not rewarded for their risk (dragons tooth, ice spike, shatterstone, on the Elementalist to begin with I am sure Rangers can help me out as well). In the current game with access to many gap closers and immobilization, melee attacks hit with more regularity than some ranged attacks (any Necromancers care to comment on how some of their slow projectiles can be dodged without dodge, I can comment that Gust is very hard to land).

Also before someone brings out the kiting argument consider that all of typical melee classes (guardian, warrior, thief) all have ranged weapons they can switch out to (if they take only melee, that is their choice). Only the D/D or D/F Elementalist is stuck in melee distance because they cannot switch weapons.

Glyph of Renewal (Elementalist):
3.25 second cast, 165 second recharge.

Fire: revive target and revive you if downed in 15 seconds
Water: revive target at full health
Air: revive target and teleport them to your location
Earth: revive 3 nearby targets.

Bug: poisoned targets are sometimes not revived.

Reasons why I never use it: you might well walk to the person and hit F. A 3.5 second cast time I think is longer than it takes to revive most people or at least on par, and is just not worth a 165 second cool down (it was when it brought back dead people but that was nerfed and cool down and casting remained).

You can argue the utility of reviving yourself 15 seconds later or reviving 3 targets at once in a zerg, but quite frankly those situations just will not make it useful enough to get on a skill bar (you would do better with Mist form for 3 seconds of invulnerability).

If the casting time was 1.25 seconds like illusion of life or 2 seconds like battle standard then it may actually find a place in my skill bar in very niche situations.

Cynz.9437:

Will we see any chance to change stats (one time) on ascended armor? Because this change is rather drastic and full ascended set (weapons + armor + trinkets) can go up to 300g costs…

Also why is condi armor is not touched? Condis meta is ruining this game atm, why nerf direct dmg builds?

I think condition armor was not touched since it was to balance PvE.

multiple condition builds acting together step on each others toes (and some classes can’t help but overwrite powerful conditions with very weak ones (i.e. gaurdians setting things on fire with 0 condition damage. They have no choice, but it can still overwrite an elementalists 300 – 1200 condition damage fire).

multiple DD builds stack additively. If I do 2000 DPS and you do 2000 DPS than minus then we do 4000 DPS when attacking the same target. So 5 people all DPS do 5x damage. If they brought a condition damage person it would probably hurt since most mobs would die too quickly, but bringing 2 would really tank their DPS.

Condition Damage is a problem in PvP and WvW because of the HP disparity in Guild Wars 2 between players and monsters. Champion monsters will happily smile away with 25 stacks of bleed, poison and fire. If you put that on a normal person they would melt in seconds (not to mention a low HP class).

There are other failing of the Elementalist that others have pointed out. From what I see your skill overhaul addresses issues 5 and 7, but it looks like that in an effort to give opponents the chance to dodge, you did not increase the DPS sufficiently to punish them when they do not.

Also by making so many AOE ground target spells you increase the carpal tunnel factor and skill factor by a lot (think engineer grenade kit build). I do not mind a high skill cap for certain classes and strategies, but they either need to be very fun or very rewarding (i.e. do something other classes can’t. right not one of the biggest drawbacks to the Elementalist is it is very high skill for average reward).

Swagg it looks like you have put a lot of thought into these skill overhauls looking at both damage and recharge, but are you going to change any stat scaling as well?

Some weapon attacks have different power scaling which is just as important as the base damage (which can be very important in some builds).

I have been collecting some data on the different classes plotting for then next class CDI.

Anyway, I have to appreciate all of the time and effort you have put into a class overhaul, but I think that you may be focusing on the wrong things.

1) the profession is not well put together. It was the first designed when energy was still used for skills and they removed that component with little to no compensation to the elementalist because most of the skills had been designed and balanced for energy (why do you think our recharge times are so long).

2) The primary class mechanic does Nothing, that’s right, besides a weapon switch every other class gets. we have to put traits to get it to do something (another thing I believe that was missing in alpha and later duct taped to the Elementalist).

2a) it used to do something by the way, water fields would latterly slow any creature in a radius and fire and air would do continual damage so you did not have to constantly spam attunements (but could since there were no cooldowns).

3) lowest health means it is 750 vitality short of high health classes and vitality 420 short of medium health classes and lowest armor meaning it is 200 toughness short of high AC classes and 140 short of medium AC classes. (This is probably one of the biggest reasons it feels like when you play the Elementalist you play the game on hard mode)

3a) I am not asking for Elementalist to be given 750 vitality or 200 toughness, I am just saying that it is very hard to balance 1 class when you give 500 – 1000 attribute bonus. I think it would be fair if the elementalist actually traded durability for damage by increasing power and critical % / critical damage by an equal amount lost.

4) our elemental traits only help us with 1/4 of our attack skills and arcane does not give any stats, but is so crucial to the Elementalist. We fall further behind in traits trying to gain some survivability through water (I think it would shock most classes that regeneration in water and curing conditions on attuning to water are not part of the core class abilities).

5) All ranged attacks take a huge DPS hit than comparable melee attacks with no regard for the difficulty of getting their full affect or duration (look no further to the 2 best weapons for the Elementalist the lightning hammer and FGS, but it works across other classes as well). I know it is annoying to hit someone in melee, but I think skills like dragon tooth, ice spike, lava font, eruption, etc need a big buff since they can be dodged by a crippled player. They either should track the target (but be blocked by dodge and other invulnerability, or should get a boost since they are so easily countered to better fit the risk vs reward).

6) Damage of the Elementalist is split between power and condition damage. This really hurts our overall DPS because the best way to maximize DD is power and crit damage which is mutually exclusive with condition damage (not that we have a competitive condition build with just bleed and fire).

7) our auto attack DPS in certain attunements is terrible… I really mean it. Water blast is the worst auto attack in the game at 82 DPS, followed by stoning at 137. Arc lightning does not fair much better at 161 and chain lightning at 174 (remember Air is supposed to be our high single target DPS). (Compare with 280 from guardian scepter orb, 279 with engineer rifle (and hits all targets in a line), 248 from range short bow (485 if you account for bleed), and 224 from Elementalist fire ball. (I only compared other ranged weapons, DPS of melee attacks -range 130 to 150 – start at 323 with Mesmer mind slash and end at 490 with warrior Ax)

7a) You may be wondering if I am a real Elementalist if I harp on auto attack DPS, but there are two reasons. One, I am still building a DPS calculation algorithms for all of the classes accounting for certain staple rotations and builds and this takes time. Two, I am literally tired (no seriourly my wrists are) of constant attunment mashing to activate and rotate skills. I would really love a few competitive builds that focus on 1 or two elements (and don’t get me started on how much easier it is to do the same or more DPS, with more survivability, roughly equal utility for so much less button mashing).

Karl McLain.5604:

Profession Changes
[stuff…]

Sigils:
• All sigils now have independent cooldowns, meaning you can use two on-swap sigils, or an on-swap and an on-crit sigil at the same time. You will not, however, be able to use two sigils of the same name at the same time. On-kill sigils that provide attributes, such as Sigil of Corruption, will not be able to be used simultaneously with other attribute modifying on-kill sigils.
• Two-handed weapons can now be slotted with two sigils.
• Sigils will receive a general balance pass to bring them more in line with each other.

[more stuff and another post]

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

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

[more stuff…]

First off I will let everyone know that slant that I am taking from this is from an Elementalist (I play other classes, but I keep coming back just like the carpal tunnel…)

• I really like the fact that 2 handed weapons can hold 2 sigils because I always felt that I took a fairly big hit in only having 2 sigils available (in PvE and WvW I would normally put my on kill sigil on trident and just kill fish for a while)

• I cannot help but think that there are a lot more Elementalist changes in the works by looking at the description of what you wanted to accomplish and the changes made (Some other professional descriptions imply the same thing).

1) Could you tell us if there are other changes along these lines, or are the other changes related to something else entirely?

2) Also I was under the impression that there would be a class balance CDI (from the 12/20 Twitch presentation). Do you know whether there will be a CDI in time for this update, or will it be for a later update?

Thank you for posting the information, I appreciate you keeping the dialogue open.

edited because I hit post reply instead of preview post…

I just thought I would give you the heads up on the elementalist (really this is not a troll):

This is not a mage from other games, the best class I can think it is closest to is a bard, a jack of all trades but master of none.

I wish I knew that at the outset.

Warrior mobility has been a sticking point for a lot longer than one month, I know it has been a huge sticking point since the ride the lightning nerf, this is just the current iteration.

I am sure other classes can chime in.

I wonder how many balance debates could be solved with a class balance manifesto:

I.e. a statement on what the core strengths and weaknesses of a class should be.

It would give more structure to class balance debates instead of this is OP, one could reply well, that class is supposed to do x, or that class is not supposed to be very good at x. It would not stop all of the trolling, but I think it would help a lot.

Hopefully when Class balance becomes a CDI topic (and it will) we will have more literature to go off of.

Please do not assume the design philosophies have anything to do with the actual classes.

Elementalist:

Elementalists are multi-faceted spellcasters that channel elemental forces, making fire, air, earth, and water do their bidding. What they lack in physical toughness, they make up in versatility and the ability to inflict massive damage in a single attack.

They did not trade durability for massive damage or even a massive damage attack. Their DPS is on par with other classes. Also Elementalists get their DPS from many attacks, not 1 attack.

Air:

_By harnessing wind and lightning, elementalists can target specific foes with focused, high-damage attacks. _

Staff air has only 1 damaging attack and it is a chain (and is the second worst auto attack in the game). The scepter has no high-damage attacks, but a series of smaller attacks. The Dagger actually has 3 attacks, none of which are high damage (although the lightning whip is the best auto attack).

I am sure other classes can comment on how their class has slipped from the original design, but as of right now the class descriptions are outdated (I believe they were created in the alpha when the elementalist attunements actually did something before traiting).

Ride the lightning was nerfed because it was a gap closer being used to increase land speed. Elementalists are really happy about the nerf, but it set a strong precedent.

Either

1) using gap closers as speed bonuses are intended use of those skills (then Ride the lightning should be unnerfed but retooled to be affected by chill and cripple).
2) using gap closers as speed bonus is not the intended use of those skills. .

Anet should come down with a firm decision either way.

I think the biggest issue of everyone here is that people defending the mechanics see it as part of the class abilities like clones and stealth.

People against it see it as exploiting skills by using them outside their intended design to gain an advantage over other classes.

I do not think people would be complaining as much if the warrior just had a skill that’s sole purpose was to charge forwards at high speed to be used as an escape, gap closer, or just running around fast.

It makes me a bit sad thinking of Guild Wars 1 where earth had more than a few abililities to turn an elementalist into an unstoppable tank if no one brought enchantment strip.
(I can remember a random PVP battle where my team died, but no one could kill me for 3 minutes because of armor of earth, sliver armor, stone strikers and mantra of earth).

I think the last thing we need is rock paper scissor classes. If there is going to be a way to apply revealed it has to be universal (i.e. hitting a thief when stealthed, or certain conditions -I always wondered how the burning thief was able to hide-).

It may be interesting to consider allowing the tool belt skill to quick res an ally. It is an AED after all, so why can’t you use it on your friends.

More 2 cents.

Many of the stealth supporters here seem to postulate that perma stealth is not a huge advantage that can be countered easily once people learn to play.

On a separate note, I think most people will agree that Rangers could use a little love in some other build diversity.

I am not going to agree or disagree only postulate this:

I think we should give rangers access to perma stealth. It seems fair right? It’s not that big of an advantage once one learns to play, it also makes sense for a scout to disappear into the wilderness. They already have some stealth with hunters shot.

Would anyone change their opinions of perma-stealth if rangers had access to it?

Here is my two cents:

1) Allows aoe hits or some conditions to apply revealed

• If I set a thief on fire… how in the world can they hope to hide? (It would also be interesting to give a % fail to stealth if they were confused?)

2) if a thief uses an attack skill in stealth they are revealed whether it hits or not (this would do an number to certain uses of heat seeker)

3) OR (all would be a very hard nerf). disallow stealth stacking (just refresh it)/ apply revealed whenever leaving stealth while in combat (I do not mind perma stealth for moving along the map, or running through mobs, just once you pick a fight, you have to finish it). This way rogues get 3-4 seconds of stealth to get the first hit, or reposition but after that, other players get 3-4 seconds to hit them back.

what I also really want to prevent are thieves that run away in stealth. Most of the counters mentioned assume that the thief presses the attack, but how many times have you had a thief run away in stealth only to return 20 seconds later to restart the match, then if they start to lose again, guess what they do next?

No class should get the fight reset button (anyone remember the dual dagger Elementalist’s and the nerfs to ride the lightning?), and as long as thieves get near perma stealth they will have it. Also remember thief skills are driven off of initiative and not cool downs, so not only do they get the ability to restart a fight, but in that time all of their skills are fresh.

Personally I opt for certain conditions to apply revealed like burning or torment, or at least if a thief takes damage in stealth they should pop out (this way the there will be a certain risk element). I am really against certain skills counter other builds (how many Mesmers would be annoyed if the Guardian got a true sight skill that dispelled clones, even if it was on a lackluster skill on a 40 second cool down).

I also think an overhaul like this should be tested out in the PvP environment first and followed by WvW. I do not see any reason to nerf stealth in PvE (which is actually much harder than those thieves make it appear, since stealth in PvE is not a huge advantage).

Tangential two cents

My personal choice would be for any attack that hits a thief in stealth applies revealed (I think if nothing else this will remove a huge annoyance factor of stealth when you swingly blindly), but we will just have to wait and see what Anet does.

I highly suspect that there is a stealth nerf in the works (sic em and the anti-stealth trap is a good example of them toying with different ideas). I just hope that whatever measures Anet chooses that it does not hit the thieves too hard (and that they do not make it rock, paper, scissors, but that all classes have access to things that counter stealth often enough to make things interesting).

DontJudgeMe.3958:

Shadowfall.6543:

Stuff

should I continue?

You probably should because I’ll break this down for you.

More Stuff

• Yes, I think it is perfectly valid to compare sustains from two different classes. Ele’s have 2 heal skills on the staff, and one on the dagger. The others come from traits, much like the traits a warrior can take (and I know it hurts your DPS, it does not help the Eles either, but 20 – 30 water is pretty much mandatory on Eles).

• as for boon access, this is mostly coming from another master trait in arcana. You guys do not need toughness since you have 1.5 to two times the health as an Ele (so it would effectively be better than permanent toughness against physical damage, and much better against conditions) by the way, no all Ele builds have access to protection, FYI.

• Mist form, Really… 75 second cool down, 3 seconds of invulnerability? I am not even going to respond to that one. Maybe before the Mistform nerfs, but just no.

• great sword cool down gives you might for every swing. Every one of you 20% cool down skills comes with something extra any other class would need to take another trait for (Elementalists require a grandmaster skill to give might with every attack).

• You want options in your traits… go over to the Ele form and look at Ele options. Most traits are mandatory, so much so you probably did not realize they were not a class mechanic (switching attunements innately does nothing but switch weapons, no fury, no removing conditions in water, no heal in water, no boons, those all come from traits. Eles also have to balance the fact that a 20% cool down only counts for 1/4 of their skills, where it can easily be 1/2 of yours. Put another way, currently there is No possible way an Ele can have 20% cool down in every line.

• RTL nerf should have made it affected by cripple, enough said.

• more awesome looking weapons… really. I will admit, one of the best strengths of the Elementalist is the cooling looking skills. I could like with a patch that trades coolness of looking skills for an ele buff.

• Conjurered weapons also completely destroy our class mechanic of attunement swapping, so would you like an ability that halved for health and reduced armor by 300? If they worked like kits then I would be a lot more willing to grant you conjured weapons, but it is obvious you haven’t used them.

• Fiery great sword, the #4 and teleport combo is an exploit on a 40 second timer (100b can still do more damage over the same period of time). It will be patch soon don’t worry. It actually is a pretty good skill, mostly because it turns the ele into a warrior with a great sword (go ahead look at the skill coefficients on the Wiki). The one they did not give is 100b, because another class with an I win button wouldn’t be fair.

• hiding in our AOE fields… right. Because our massive auto attacking DPS is going to kill anyone. I will tell you what, roll an ele, If you promise to sit in your fields, I promise to wade in and whack you, who do you think is going to die first?

• You complain about being kited… There are a lot of warrior abilities to mitigate immobilization, cripple, conditions, and give a lot of stability uptime. If you are having trouble with that I suggest you rebuild.

Seriously, play an Elementalist until at least level 30. I have at least done the courtesy of rolling a warrior, before spouting off on mechanics.

hmmm I am running out of space on this post, and time before holiday travels. I will be back with some new imbalances in a few days.

Happy Holidays by the way.

disable the option to auto target on skill usage. Ele’s run into this all the time with Ride the lightning.

DontJudgeMe.3958:

I’m tired of people coming to the warrior section and complain about us being OP in whatever. It’s annoying to find all these posts scattered throughout the warrior section.

So if you have a complain, please fill them in here, in the complaint box.

Because if we gather all the complains into one place… Us warriors can have a good laugh together in this huge topic about your misfortunes.

Regards,

-Typical Warrior

I’ll take the bait. (I play an elementalist main so you understand where these come from)

• Healing signet 400 HP/Sec, Signet of restoration 200 HP per case (with after cast, most spells can’t even be cast 1 per second).
• All of your 20% reduction skills come with a bonus (i.e. like 20% reduction on rifle/harpoon with pierce while rangers require a master trait that only gives pierce).
• on the topic of crackshot, Eles 20% reduction to water magic cool down was moved to master because of balance (Devs think skill reductions are master level), Crackshot is adept…
• mobility on Greatsword, 4 words: “Ride the lightning nerf” (Eles were nerfed into the ground because of our ability to disengage, we’ll see what happens with warrior mobility).
• over 1000 additional “Free attribute points” (8000 HP = 800 vitality and armor 300 armor = 300 toughness) while maintaining comparable (or better) DPS, better control, and great mobility.

should I continue?

Harper.4173:

urieldhynne.2743:

Harper.4173:

urieldhynne.2743:

Warrior mobility is ok except GS#5, pretty op. 1200 range without target combined with GS#3 (same weapon)?

Make GS#5 target only and 600/900 range, that is enough to use as gap closer, and stop using it for a “Free Out of combat” mechanic, because, GS#5 (1200) GS#3 (450) and sword#2 (600) if you run 1h sword, yes, pretty op 2250 range in 3 leaps without need a target…. pretty op.

If you run that you’ll be literally USELESS in combat since you have no CC and no means of holding your opponent in place to engage him.
You can ONLY run away with that spec. Why would anyone do it except to troll ? And if he’s trolling -why would it matter?

WvW is about coordinated attacks – if an opponent is running then you are winning.
sPVP is about holding points – if an opponent is running – then you are winning.

I’m going to say it again. VICTORY =/= KILL.

No CC? you have a LOT of cripples with that 2 weapon, the only issue is 1h sword is better for conditions, play a guardian and tellme about “no CC to keep them in combat”

With GS#5 (target needed) and a little less range you have still a great gap closer, the same CC, but you lose the “free out of combat” so, why you complain?

GS warrior have the same “free out of combat” as light armor classes but a lot tanky, with a lot of damage and CC. That is fair?

Yes to “gap closer”
No to “free out of combat”

You don’t even understand what CC is. And one cripple skill does not a CC-effective weapon make.
You lack basic understanding of GS skills. If you are crippled you can still walk away OR dodge. 100b ( the main source of GS Damage ) roots a warrior in place. Even crippled you can easily escape it leaving him swinging at air.

Warriors were always intended to be a mobile class. It’s right there in the warrior description on gw2.com. Go read that.
GS was always designed to be a weapon that allowed great mobility and great damage but with almost no cc or support options.

Rangers, engis, mesmers, eles – all of them can disengage from fights easily.
Guardians can’t – but they have access to protection, reflects, retal, blocks – which mean that they’re not crippled by this issue so much.

When the classes were designed a more defensive – low mobility class was created – the guardian – and a more offensive high mobility one – warrior.

Please stop trying to nerf EVERY good thing about the warrior into the ground.

Mobility ? Kill it.
Condi removal? Kill it.
Healing Signet ? Oh lord please kill it.
CC Hammer / Longbow? Already died.

Why not just realize that if a warrior resets a fight you have WON That fight.
I consider myself victorious every time a mesmer stealths and blinks away, each time a thief stealths and runs away, etc.
But no – you want a free kill because? Because there’s nobody to stop you from posting deluded notions and unfair claims on the forums.

Ele’s have one mobile skill with off hand dagger (so only D/D or S/D Eles get it). its range is less then rush and it is a 40 second recharge if it misses the target (20 if it hits, but kind of defeats the purpose of a disengage).

as an Ele in WvW though, I have yet to fully disengage from a warrior with a greatsword, and I have had more than a few run away from me.

I am not joining the nerf the warrior mobility bandwagon (as it would be boring for warriors to be kited to death). However, in the current state something on the warrior has to give.

Well Anet knows what to do when a class has too much mobility.

Look at ride the lightning… any warriors up to having their mobility skills range reduced by 25% and double recharge on miss in the same patch?

I would be willing to bet a small sack of gold that that kind of change is not coming to the warrior, anyone want to take me up on it?

When we get our CDI discussion I will be happy to create an itemized list of how our skills and traits breakdown compared to other classes.

for a short list is thus:

our practical maximum survivability (HP and Armor) is where the warrior starts off base, therefore I think we either need:

• most innate survivability so we do not need to always spec it
• or (and more of what I want) is our base DPS should be the practical maximum of warriors (Preferably in active skills, but I would take much improved auto attacks as well).

One of our core class features is putting down combo fields for other classes (or using them ourselves). However there is no way of improving the effect of those combos.

• maybe we could get rid of attunement cool down (set it to some flat number, preferably 1 second like engineer kits, but 9 or 10 seconds would work well) and use that % to increase the effect of comboing off those fields (longer might duration).

From my perspective it appears that the elementalist weapon skills were designed in Alpha when skills used energy and traits did not exist (please correct me if I am wrong). When those mechanics were changed did anyone do a rebalancing check? It seems to me that if in Guild Wars 1 if you removed energy costs the skills would need some serious rebalancing, as the elementalist was designed assuming unlimited energy management, but other classes like the warrior or assassin were designed to be very limited by energy.