Guild Wars 2

EvilHero.1248:

MyPuppy.8970:

I think the reason behind this is quite simple. Ele core mechanics revolves around attunement swapping and self comboing. Thus Fire/Air/Earth/Water/Arcane traitlines grant many boons/effects/advantages when you rotate and combo through your attunements. Tempest mechanics competes directly with this by forcing you to stay in one attunement, and keeping you from getting back in it. So by using overloads you lose what the entire class has been designed and balanced around. It would have been fine if weapon skills weren’t set up in fire for attack, water for healing, air for cc and earth for defense. Tempest could actually worth it if we had a weapon swap mechanic like others class do (stronger aa, skills with shorter cd, and better efficiency overall without having to rotate/combo, and no more themathically themed weapon set) and cycling through attunements just to linger to their passive effects and overload. This would limit our weapon skills to 10, but we could switch fighting style on the spot.

Well said. Give this guy a cookie!
no matter how well you play, there’s a conflict in the mechanic for both core ele and tempest. if you really need to stay in 1 attunement, might as well just go with fire staff ele, this way you deal much more dps using the old traits than tempest. this is also the reason why so many ppl are raging, nerfing ice bow is just adding more oil to the fire. not saying it doesn’t deserve to be nerf but 50% straight nerf is just simply killing it…

Edit some spellings

I already posted this early on in the tempest development. Nobody cared. Nobody seemed to grasp that the ele base class has high cooldowns and lower skill damage to accommodate speed switching attuments and firing off more skills faster. We’re now two weeks from release, this is not going to change. Our skills are going to become gravely underpowered from each element due to much slower attunement swapping and high cooldowns.

As previously stated by many people, overloads would have to be ridiculously overpowered in order to be functional and compensate for the lost damage, healing, and boons. This is not going to happen either.

What do we end up with? Well, for starters an awkward and unwieldy elite spec which is going to wind up being a backline boon/heal bot. This doesn’t really mesh with the whole “front line support” class that this was supposed to be.

Doesn’t matter at this point, tempest isn’t getting any better. Even hoping for actual minor traits that aren’t complete trash support to help ONLY overloads stand on their own (which they really don’t). Its a low end trash spec that will be used as a gimic for a while, and probably by people easily amused. It will never see high end pvp. It’ll be back of the pack in wvw. It’ll be ok, yet awkward in pve. I have absolutely zero expectations that anything will change to make tempest anything other than what it is.

DH is not a great spec, but it is not the worst. Although, it was designed by the same guy who MADE the worst spec.

Tempest is the only spec that goes COMPLETELY against the core mechanic of the base class.

It is also half designed off a build elementalists ALREADY HAD, but alas they had to remove fire’s embrace in order to make the tempest dung pile look even remotely appealing.

So while DH may not be great, it might not even be good, at least its still better than tempest. God knows Karl probably tried his hardest to make it suck, but it still comes out second best to tempest.

We’ll probably also see this post shortly followed by Jsk or Leo defending tempest to its very core (ITS A HEALING SPEC! NO ITS A SUPPORT SPEC! No matter what those two clowns state, it still doesn’t stand on its own as a melee support spec as stated by the devs…although it will probably play dead quite well though).

And finally, with the new nerfs to ele fire condi (instead of adjusting fire condi across the board?…Wtf?) and the icebow nerfs (this one i’ll admit should have happened along time ago, but without fixing conjures in general they need to be removed, this joke just isn’t funny anymore). I’m pretty sure the devs should just leave the eles alone now, and let them die with a little dignity, since the devs apparently have none (ie: see the mic drop video and twitter post of the idiot who should be fired for taking a dump on Anet’s professional image).

To make a direct statement on the video and the twitter post – that was really dirty. You should be fired because i’m pretty sure you don’t have the decency to even feel bad for mocking roughly an 1/8th of your player base who pre-paid for HoT and main an ele. Frankly, I haven’t pre-purchased, and the video and twitter post completely sicken me.

Wow. It is no wonder you just don’t understand what people are saying to you, and why you are completely mistaken and out in the left field.

Simply put. Tempest does NOTHING better than any other spec. It is not that it has a role anywhere and people are complaining. It is that it does not have a role ANYWHERE. It does NOTHING better than any other spec, no matter the combination by adding tempest you lose damage, healing, boon sharing, etc – and you gain nothing but the ability to throw a flashy channel skill without stability that is easily interrupted and has no built in ability to attempt to cover itself, ALL WHILE CLAIMING TO BE A FRONT LINE SPEC.

If there was even a slight niche role that tempest excelled at, there would be no cause to complain. Unfortunately, and this is also what you are gravely misunderstanding, it does not excel anywhere.

It doesn’t offer more support. I doesn’t offer anything better than any other combination of specs that does not include tempest.

To address overloads, again, the main problem is that the cost to use the overloads COMPLETELY out weighs not using them and just doing something else, anything else.
NO I don’t mean that they HAVE to be ALL ABOUT DPS. (You’re like a broken record, stating everyone wants the overloads to be dps. They don’t need to be dps, they need to be balanced so they are even worth casting against what you lose by using the stupid things, or even taking the entire functionally useless (by comparison to every other trait line) tempest trait line).

I think I’m going to completely dismiss any further arguments from you, as everyone else probably should do. As you plainly do not comprehend the problem and seem to believe that everyone else’s arguments are pigeon holed into making tempest a pure dps spec.

Jsk.6180. You have been moving around the ele forums spreading A LOT of bad information, A LOT of terrible reasoning, and A LOT of really bad arguments. I was the first one to post the logical inconsistency of the tempest spec before it was released, just using the information given by the devs (it was since confirmed). Since you seem to require more education, allow me to go over this ONE MORE TIME.

You need to stay in an attunement for 5 seconds to overload. You need to channel the overload. If you leave the current attunement you get a longer attunement recharge (and if you don’t, you’re stuck in the same attunement – don’t get lost yet, I’ll explain why this is bad in a moment).

Are you with me so far? Ok, lets move on…

The aoe damage done during the overload channel is terrible. The damage done by the actual overload is terrible. Healing done by the water overload is terrible. So, by overloading we get…low aoe channel damage coupled with either terrible final damage or terrible healing. WONDERFUL!

However, if you continue to attunement dance (you know…just like devs pushed us to do since release?), we get higher damage AND higher healing, faster access to boons and boon sharing. So far tempest kinda looks pretty lame, right? But I guess if you’re heart is REALLY set on using a spec line that has ALL minors that ONLY buff overloading in the most miniscule way (one lets you overload, and the other two add swiftness and protection – can’t get swiftness and protection anywhere else…oh wait) coupled with majors which are extremely uninspired then I guess tempest is the elite spec for YOU!
And why for the love of God do we need a minor trait to allow us to overload and nothing else? Can’t the spec ITSELF give us the ability to overload without WASTING a minor on it as a baseline? I guess that would be too much to ask

Speaking of elites…Do you really want to go there Jsk.6180? Seriously? Lets not and just agree that its bad. I really don’t think you have any ground to stand on for that argument, although you really didn’t have any ground for the tempest spec itself and you seem to be trooping on like a good mindless soldier.

Back to the point though. It was destined to be a terrible spec when the spec is designed to force you to stay in one attunement and the class is designed to plan and use skills/attunements fast.

It was destined to fail when the entire balance of the class skills across ALL weapons and attunements are balanced against the other classes with lower damage and higher recharges for having four times the amount of skills per weapon set.

I’ve spent far more time on this post than I intended, but you’re constant white knighting is really annoying.

5.

I would have went with 4 but the reveal video was terrible. Karl appeared unable to use an elementalist at a remedial level. This explains why he designed a spec that is completely counter to how the elementalist mechanic is designed and how the damage, healing, and survivability is balanced.

Rubi sounded completely unimpressed through the entire reveal. Any encouraging words she said about the spec sounded forced, almost like she was choking on the words.

Showing an ele attacking dummies. It certainly was something. Boring comes to mind. I guess the only thing it really showed was how terrible the damage off the overloads is. Thanks, I guess.

Whoever put this video together really should have done more editing. Although I suspect if it had been edited properly we would have had the opening, afew seconds of an ele attacking dummies, and then the credits. The fight with Svanir…that should have been cut. Not only did it high light how terrible the entire concept of overloading is. It also high lighted the terrible damage, the fact the person working on eles can’t even use them (Even after putting in a tremendous amount of time designing the skills? – something mentioned in the video…that probably should have been cut as it only serves to make this spec appear even worse).

I could go one, but i’m waiting to see if this is the start of a trend for the rest of the specs. Then I’ll decide if i’m going to throw money at HoT.

Leo G.4501:

Snow White.1842:

Tempest is counter productive to the entire concept of attunement swapping which is the fundamental mechanic of the elementalist class. There is no argument against this.

I do not agree. While there are builds that focus on Elementalist attunement dancing to spam boons and skills, that isn’t the only spec Ele is capable of nor should it be the only concept an Ele spec should be aimed to. If it did, there’d practically be no point to the new elite spec idea.

I’ve just destroyed every argument made to support an elite spec that shouldn’t even exist if the person creating it had even THE SLIGHTEST WORKING KNOWLEDGE OF THE CLASS.

I doubt you’re capable of destroying every possible argument. You don’t have the open mind enough to even grasp most other arguments, much less combat them.

Nice cherry picking of the quote. Apparently you missed the part about the elementalist’s skills having both damage and cool downs being balanced against having four attunements.

If your argument is based on cherry picked quotes with little to no understanding of the comment or class mechanics, please feel free to not reply, thanks.

Lets try to be extremely clear. Lets try to be extremely honest. I’m tired of all the white knighting.

Tempest is counter productive to the entire concept of attunement swapping which is the fundamental mechanic of the elementalist class. There is no argument against this. The entire skill set on every single elementalist weapon sets are balanced against every single other class(es) weapon sets on the idea that the elementalist has four attunements (four times as many skills) and therefore has to have massive cool downs and lower damage. So, at this point, this is where Tempest has already failed (LISTENING KARL?).

I don’t even need to continue at this point. I’ve just destroyed every argument made to support an elite spec that shouldn’t even exist if the person creating it had even THE SLIGHTEST WORKING KNOWLEDGE OF THE CLASS.

You know what? I’m not done bashing the tempest “elite” spec around yet. It deserves a severe beating (that unfortunately can’t be done verbally, or through the fuzzy kitten filter). To repeat what I’ve already stated in a thread that almost instantly got buried. Lets have an example where gaining singularity, channeling it, and moving to another attument…all together take only 15 seconds. A nice flat 15 seconds. After looking at ANY of the damage totals from ANY of the overloaded attunements…I don’t even have to give you ball park numbers. Every who has even looked at the elementalist class already knows they can do far more damage in 15 seconds using current builds than they can by wasting time using an overload.

Using an overload is wasted potential from rotation. Be it either healing, dps, or boons. Makes no difference. Tempest doesn’t stand up to what we already have.

Then on top of it, we get the war horn. Love it or hate it, the cool downs are terrible. Shouts? Again, cool downs are (generally – save one, I think?) terrible.

And once more to repeat what I said in my other thread. The saddest part of the tempest spec is the trait set up. They took away fire’s embrace, and pretty much brought it back in another incarnation. An auramancer build is the best overall use of the tempest “elite” spec, if you don’t intend to be even remotely optimal.

If you take Tempest. Its function is to make each attunement overload. So by choosing it, its kind of an unspoken idea that you plan to USE it with modest frequency. Its a little silly though. You voluntarily lock yourself into an attunement to gain singularity, then use it, and lock yourself OUT of that attunement.

So lets guess here a little. Lets forget the channel time. Lets just presume for a moment that once you lock yourself out of an attunement the recharge is 15 seconds. Flat. In that time you could go through the other three attunements maintaining the ele average dps (assuming of course you are a cantrip ele with the meta build). Or you can overload, and forgo using any skills from any other attunement and lose what? roughly 60% of the ele’s overall dps? Then what? You spam your other attunements to try and make up the dps you just lost/wasted by camping an attunement to use a crap skill for a crap elite spec?

So, let me get this straight our new “Elite” specialization is so amazing that its worth camping long enough to pretty much ruin your dps output for? I don’t think so. I can’t even figure out who thought this would be a good idea. The concept for this spec is crap, the design is self defeating, and the ONLY function that this dung heap appears to serve is to replace fire’s embrace.

I hate war horns. They don’t interest me in the slightest. Sadly the war horn appears to be the GOOD part of this “elite” spec. I had assumed that no elite spec could possibly be worse than the dragon hunter. I was wrong.

I keep seeing a lot of posts stating eles got buffed. Maybe I’m not seeing what other people are seeing.

I see a lot of traits moved around. I see a lot of damage traits no longer working in conjunction with each other due to traits being moved around.

I see signets got shafted by the removal of fires embrace (I guess glyphs and signets aren’t meant to be used, at this rate I’m not even entirely clear why they’re left in the game as a majority of them just aren’t remotely good).

We did get a couple buffs to conjures. Conjures just generally suck though. Yeah someone will argue that one or two skills see some use, sure. I’ll grant that. Lets be honest though, they were mostly used for exploitive purposes and now that its fixed, nearly all conjures, glyphs, and signets could be removed from the game and most people wouldn’t miss them (probably wouldn’t even notice they were gone).

Seems to me, with the talked about buffs…we seem to have an awful lot of skills stacking up that really don’t have much of a use with the upcoming traits changes. Doesn’t really seem promising.

Elites…can throw pretty much all of them into the pile. I can’t even remember the last time I used one. It just sits at the end of my bar gathering dust. I’m actually not even sure which elite sits on my bar, I pay that little attention to them anymore.

Effectively though, what I gather from the trait changes for ele is that we are supposed to use cantrips, and only cantrips. We also should be using arcana and water (although having a trait that only works on other people…Ahem water line I’m looking at you is a horrible idea since traits are meant to enhance YOU, not everyone else. Why aquatic is still there, I have no idea).

Really, from the trait changes…I can’t say I’m impressed. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t currently use a meta build. It looks like I might be soon though. They seem determined to pigeon hole eles into arcana, water, and cantrips. We’re going to be in the exact same place (meta wise) as before the trait changes…we’re just going to be doing less damage overall.

With all of the changes taking place, remember, we’re still the lowest hp pool, and lowest armor pool, losing stats off trait lines, and damage off trait lines due to reorganizing.

To me, it appears, we are falling from the meta-grace. Unless I’ve completely overlooked something the next “content patch” is looking extremely bleak. Since when it all shakes down, a lot more of us will be build pretty much the same, using extremely similar armor sets, and nearly identical weapon sets.

TLDR: I’m whining I guess. Maybe a little tired. I should grab some coffee and maybe re-read some more posts. Is there an updated build editor yet? Huh, I’m a little peckish. Might go make some breakfast. Enjoy your day, and please be kind when you inevitably reply, thank you.

Not only does it COST more to make LIGHT armor over the other two armor types. It also takes 9 MORE days to make it, due to the time gating of the creation of damask. Unless you pay A LOT more to buy damask off the TP, you’re getting screwed twice at the same time.

I’ve made two sets of light armor. I would not be upset at all if the requirements FINALLY changed. The time gating alone annoys me, but knowing I also require a TON more mats in order to make it…well that plainly sucks.

Nope. Op is correct. Ele is getting hit with some serious nerfs. There may be some slight build opportunities opening up, but a lot of current builds will become under powered once everything falls into place.

For starters. Traits and attribute points are being separated. Sounds good on the face for nearly all classes. I mean, the points are reassigned to armor, right? But…what does that mean for the ONLY class to have BOTH the lowest armor and the lowest health pool? If Elementalists are not getting MASSIVE damage over the other classes, I’m seeing no reason for the class to remain on the lowest tier of both health and armor. Yet…here we are. I’m sure some stat allocating will take a little pressure off, but lets be honest…anet forgot they made only one class in this position and don’t have any idea what to do about it. To sum this up, ele starts with less stats than every other class when you consider to translation to vitality and toughness.

Celestial stats. Someone has stated already that this is ONLY for pvp. I guess you must know more than everyone else since it was not clearly stated that this change was ONLY for pvp. As far as I recall they mentioned adjusting the stats on the pvp amulet, but the pve aspect was not mentioned at all. Considering anet’s wonderful track record for wack a mole straight across the board “balancing” (which they denied previously…although I’m unsure on what basis) I’m pretty sure we can count on the pve version of celestial to take a solid hit at the same time as the pvp amulet. It will most likely be an “accident” that will take 6-12 months to fix.

Next on the list. When you look at other classes trait lines, even in the current unfinished state. You can see builds emerging. You can see potential damage increases or at the very least the ability to salvage a current builds functionality somewhat. So far with the ele info I can see 2 maybe 3 middle ground builds. With the placement of certain traits a lot of damage is lost in a lot of different spots. Although I will admit it looks interesting, there is no question we will soon be the lowest dps with the lowest armor, building tanky builds and playing as half a healer. Unless there are some serious changes to the trait information that was given out, or someone takes notice that ele is the only class with both the lowest armor and health pool, this class will most likely fall not just out of the meta, completely out of competition. I’ll still play it for love of the class, but that’s about it.

On another note. Since this whole dog pile trait system is coming before HoT…they might want to fix all the concerns with tomes and skill point scrolls. That minor detail…and how many skills all my characters may lose will play a large role in my decision to buy HoT. I just don’t have time to fix all my characters if they become fatalities in this train wreck.

His name is next to every post. His entire thread is inquiring about EXACTLY what he did to me. This isn’t naming and shaming. He is openly inviting the inquiry on his own behavior based on the thread being designed to find out more information ABOUT it. So I’m not feeling the least bit guilty over this, since he is blatantly guilty of what he is inquiring about.

culturespy.1324:

fellyn.5083:

Nia.3964:

In an effort to reduce the flaming and ‘toxicity’ I started searching for unfarmed megaservers, then offering a taxi for those wanting to finish their Living Story.

That’s so backwards.

But it is a much better solution than trolling and I intend to help if I can.

I’ve seen people looking to finish LS stumble across a farming map on accident and catch a ton of rage and I don’t like it at all, but I understand why: the cooperative farm maps have been disrupted by trolls time and time again, always with the excuse that they’re “just there to finish the event”. You can see it in the screenshots that started this thread. It gets old fast.

I didn’t participate in Blix farming, but from what I’ve read, it’s the same few people. I’ve also heard they’re active in EotM. These people are the catalyst that turns this whole situation “toxic”. If not for these trolls being purposefully disruptive, the community would find a way to make everyone happy.

Without these “trolls”, as you call them, I’d have not completed. As it was, it was scaled ridiculously high, and took a HUGE effort. With their help, I managed to complete, and managed to get the rest of it as well. I shouldn’t have to ask, to do MY LS. I shouldn’t have to change maps to do MY LS. I shouldn’t have to endure a ton of insults and ridicule to do MY LS. As a side note, I’m not going to either, EVER.

I’m not against farming. I farmed out gold runs in BB, and I STILL have over 10k queen’s gauntlet entrance tickets. I ran gold. I made gold happen. I participated with a TON of other amazing BB gold runners (Love you all, btw and when it comes back I’ll be at the front of the line to do it some more!). I’m certainly not against farming this event, even as broken of a concept as failing to profit is. Chances are, now that I’ve gotten (I believe everything I need – not sure), i’ll probably JOIN the farmers farming.

What I am against is this completely fake defense people are putting up. No, the farmers aren’t going to help you complete. This is FALSE. There might be a rare map when the majority has the integrity to do it, but its a rare exception. I did switch some maps, the same verbal abuse exists. The common phrase “Find another map” is often used, and this is completely unacceptable.

While I have no issues with the farming. I would side with the “trolls” on this one. Failing to profit is not by design. Attempting to excuse it is just a veiled circular argument that goes nowhere. If any of you farmers have any dignity or ethics at all, next time you should stop typing and try helping. As someone else pointed out, even alternating wins/losses can optimize loot results by resetting diminishing returns.

I’m not picking on anyone in particular. So don’t bother getting ruffled. There are so many posts, with so many descriptions and explanations about the LS2 npc characters. This is why the LS2 story writing fails. Hard. No one really knows why the characters are doing so many stupid things. Everyone has to try and explain it themselves.

Sorry M&K, are very stupid characters. The only thing they bring to the table is real life politics in an extremely poor manner. I can’t justify it at all. If the world were in danger, no lets think smaller. If the country…nope, smaller still. If my crappy little town were in danger (and I mean a level of danger that it would be impossible for someone not to know about), I think you’d be hard pressed to find many people out in the open discussing their relationship or sexual status (especially silly since both M&K are fully aware that a DRAGON is waking). If you can say, well that’s “real life”…you’d wind up dead fairly quickly in the event of an emergency (possible COD – being stupid).

Now the conversation counter will be “but its a video game (but but but…)”. Ok, its a video game, why throw a possibly charged topic at your player base? Simple answer, someone wasn’t thinking about how to do the story right. It was a quick script, and someone green lit it without looking at it. VOs were pushed asap. Just to get it done. Not to get it done right.

Is there a right way to do a lesbian love story in the middle of a war? Short answer, yes. This actually was the ONLY redeeming quality of this last dog pile of a story. When everyone gathered at tree town, and K whispers to M. Tactful. Tasteful. Subtle. Writing doesn’t always require a baseball bat, like the rest of the crap that was written. The relationship conversation didn’t even require that the player BE there. It was just going to happen, with or without you. Might want to have your writers take a good long hard look at that ONE section of the LS, to try and figure out what they did right.

To all those who have a high opinion of the LS “story”. Stop. Listen to yourself. Why are you excusing the story? Why are you explaining the story? A story needs to be interpreted by whoever is reading it, or a part of it. It doesn’t need all the holes filled in, or excused, or ignored. If the writing is done even half way well, it stands on its own. The LS “story” does not stand on its own. You have to excuse it. You have to explain it. You have to ignore all the random stuff that makes no sense.

I read enough of the first page of this thread to see the direction. I don’t really care if I’m repeating anything.

The LS (to me) seems like an excuse to add very thin “content” over mostly already existing areas. Npc text covers any pretense for being “where ever” doing “what ever”. Drytop (as an area) is tiny. If dropped as a dlc without the LS, players would be saying, “Wtf? Where is the rest?”. As it stands the mentally feeble fall into the LS like its the greatest thing since in door plumbing. When in fact, its very little and contains a lot of “wheels” for the gerbil player base to run on without any point (or even much of a reward).

Gaining level 5000 in wvw was mentioned as “end game”. Right, gaining endless levels without purpose is a great idea (this is sarcasm), but you might as well work on the wvw titles while you’re at it. Wait a minute…those titles…there is something not quite right here (I’m not even going to bother – these are far too stupid to really go into detail with).

Rank 80 in spvp and tpvp. Generally this WOULD be considered an end game option. Well, if class balance passes happened more than twice a year. I guess randomly adding, changing, or adjusting tool tips could be considered a balance pass, if you hated the game you are working on. Otherwise, maybe fixing existing skills and useless traits might be a better use of time. Just saying, not judging.

Dungeons, yes end game material finally. Well, if you like encounters that make all your control skills useless. Or if you have already ran them hundreds of times (to the point where you can pass out drunk and still be able to do a perfect run). Or if you like being one shotted (for all you masochists out there). After two years the dungeons kind of look like the example they’re using to make the LS “content”.

Before I just drop this post. I really have to ask what is up with this “wvw season”? I remember working for achievements during the last one. This one really sucks, I mean seriously lack luster, like no one actually wanted to do anything with it. Ten minutes in eotm I had my first week pop up completed. I got killed by another player because I was standing there trying to figure out if I was being played or if this was seriously intended. Is this season of wvw supposed to be this lack luster? Is this supposed to kill it off for good? I’m just not sure. What I do know, is that silly little weekly achievement is insulting, and generally seems like I’m being made fun of for even bothering with wvw.

Ok, I’m done. I’ll completely forget about what I’ve posted here and go back to playing it like its a cartoony arcade game. Because its just not going to get any deeper than that, the LS story line shows this to be true.

I miss my HUGE white bunny mini. I miss my jingle bear. I miss my rainbow phoenix. I miss the flexibility of builds. I miss being able to run anything anytime (with heros), rather than being tied to waiting for people to run things (I know someone will blabber about finding more people, blah blah blah – not everyone wants to bother waiting all the time). Oh, and I miss my little black moa chick.

I have to wonder why some of the special minis never got transferred over. The HOM seems like a huge waste. All the armor, weapon skins, and the minis collected…that never actually did anything but “earn points”. The GW2 HOM is more of an after thought, a couple ruined rooms (very depressing). A bunch of skins, that are more than slightly ugly. Pets, that only a ranger can use. For GW2 I guess you just have to look at the HOM and wonder why they bothered. There really isn’t anything there worth while. There is no vanity to it. No prestige. Its just a sad and depressing waste of space, with absolutely NOTHING that ties my new characters to my old legacy (if it can even be called a legacy with such a loose half baked tie in).

I would try and explain this. Unfortunately there really isn’t an explanation for what you are about to see. This is Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, gone very, very wrong.

http://imgur.com/a/YB6gp#0

Yep, great fun so far. I went to tree town. Talked with characters that have no personalities. Talked to the “pale tree” who has suddenly decided to join the game (I have no use for him/her/it…as its information is generally useless). Was told to go to Iron Marches.

Story line completely stalls. No progression. Nothing. Nada. Tried switching maps, still didn’t work. A player really shouldn’t have to try switching maps to make content work. Especially for a story line.

This stinks of the same rushed garbage that was LS1. I took a year off playing because I could no longer watch the same repeated mistakes. Defending this patch by saying everything has bugs blah blah blah…is a crap argument. There is nothing new in this patch. It uses the same scripting as everything before it. It was just done extremely poorly. It just looks like what ever people made this didn’t fully understand what they were working with. Like the wolves spawning in the wrong spots…that’s not an engine bug…someone got the placement wrong. Almost like it was done and never looked at on a test environment…yeah…almost like that…

Yes, bugs happen. Bugs can be fixed. However when the “bugs” are actually errors caused by lack of working knowledge of scripting the events…maybe someone else should have done it. Someone who has a bit more experience with it.

Anyway, this wonderful “addition” to the game leaves little desire to log in. Let alone attempt completing the story line. I suppose we could all just log in and check out the gem store though since that never fails to work and if it does its all hand on deck to get it fixed. I half wonder if there is even a dev team left, probably fired them all, and hired a bunch of lawyers and advertisers, that would certainly explain the remedial scripting errors.

SakuraJD.4720:

With the new system being what it is, and the new way to obtain skins… i was curious, is it still possible to obtain what is now known as the Tribal Armor? and if not… think you could maybe add it to the wvw skin vendors for badges or something?

I replied to this in another thread, but i’ll do so again here. The armor set is available from the badge vendor in wvw. You need to go down the tabs on the left hand side. I believe (if I’m not mistaken), its a “blue” set. Its just a set of skins you can apply to any armor. I’m pretty sure they’re still in that vendor.

Just adding I think the entire set is less than a couple hundred badges

Just logged in to a random boarder land, if its the light armor I’m thinking of, its called Dry Bones. Its about 90 badges for the skins

Seabreeze.8437:

Wherever the Tribal Armor set goes, I’ll go. Simple as that. Just waiting to see it come back.

Available in wvw as a skin. Just the badge armor vendor, and then go down the tabs. I think its a “blue” set. I got it wvw I think the total set might be acouple hundred badges, if that.

All classes have a defining function. Something that is “extra”. Something that adds something to the class. Above the weapon skills. A definition.

Warriors have adrenaline.

Necros, deathshroud.

Elementalists have attunements. Except, the attument switching is required. If you don’t use it, you are crippled.

Why is it, that the elementalist “special function” an absolute requirement in order to access all our “extra weapon skills”?

It doesn’t fit.

Not only does the elementalist special act as a necessary part of survival, it doubles as a time gate.

Now, because the elementalist has access to so many skills. The developers in their “infinite wisdom” decided to make them generally weaker than other class skills and add fairly long cool downs. That not being enough, they added a cool down on the elementalist “special function”.

Lets take a good long look at this. So all skills have cool downs, and the attuments have cooldowns. So effectively elementalists have double cool downs. In order to try and alleviate some of this mess, elementalists generally put points in Arcana. A lot of builds (not all), but a lot are based around 30 points in Arcana. Why? Because putting in just 20 seems a bit silly when you can put 30 and get Evasive Arcana (or whatever other Grand Master trait tickles your rear).

Not to get tied up in builds, point being anywhere from 10 to 30 points (or anywhere in between) is pretty much recommended in order to try and work around “double cool downs”. So in summary on this point, elementalist players have to use trait points (if they choose) to try and work around the elementalist “special function”.

Wait…what? Trait points used to WORK AGAINST the classes “special function”?

Before we go any further – no I’m not arguing for lowering cool downs on skills or attunements – just making a vague point that the class seems to be somewhat self defeating before you even really get started with it

Seems to me, that if you need to use traits points (generally used for making a defined build) to try and “fix” the classes “special function”, you have a broken class. At the very least you have a class that will never be properly balanced.

This entire concept of attempting to use trait points to fix double cool downs, doesn’t fit. There is no other class this amount of stupid packed into it.

Lets have a look at the class. I mean, if the design of the class is based on this amazing amount of stupid, there has to something decent about it.

Health…nope.

Armor…nope.

Survivability, pretty shabby even when pigeon holed into a second class bunker.

In a nut shell. If we look at Armor, Health, with the starting stats, the elementalist really drew the short straw. Its hardly a surprise that elementalists are becoming an endangered species in “competitive pvp” (I guess this exists, at least the devs seem to think so..).

Going forward, things will get better, right? I mean, we have a feature pack coming up with new Grand Master traits, this should fix everything – including world hunger, right? I would like to be optimistic, and say yes. However, after seeing what the internal cool downs are on the new traits, I’m going with no. The best the elementalist can hope for out of the new feature pack, is one more “one trick pony” build, nothing more.

This write up does not mean I hate the elementalist, on the contrary. The elementalist design is absolutely amazing, and wonderfully done. Just not for Guild Wars 2. In fact, when I look at this class, compared to the others, I have no idea how it made into this game. It feels like its been imported from a much better game that requires far more strategy and intelligence than Guild Wars 2 requires.

When you have to use a conjured weapon and it does more damage and completely negates your classes special function, your class, ele, is kittening broken.

When your highest spike dps build revolves around a trait allowing you to abuse another trait for direct damage (ie: fresh air builds), your kittening class is broken.

When your skill tabs for fire and air state they are for heavy damage, damage which hasn’t been seen since beta, your kittening class is broken.

When your traits in every trait line generally punish your class for using its own special function, your class is kittening broken.

When you give a class the lowest armor and health, and consistently raise cooldowns, and lower damage and still expect it to have the highest skill ceiling, your class is kittening broken.

When you implement a class so complicated that it has no hope of being properly balanced against the rest of the remedial classes, your kittening game is broken on a fundamental level.

I will make no apologies for being rude about how things stand. I spent a lot of money for my collectors edition. I spent a lot of money in game. I can’t even log into this pile of dairy queen dog kitten swirl anymore for longer than 20 minutes without feeling sick about how kittening stupid a person has to be to make so many handicapped decisions on balancing.

The only reason this kitten pile is still installed is because I really enjoyed the first GW, and I spent a fair chunk of change on this one. At this point, I can’t justify spending anymore more money on this game, or any future expansions. Eventually I’ll finally give in, pile the collectors edition in the trash, uninstall, and move on for good. I keep coming back and hoping its worth another look, so far its just more trash piled on more trash. I see the gem store is really taking off though, that’s just kittening grand.

From your builds, get rid of earth. The meager points for toughness you get from it aren’t any good unless you’re going balls deep for the full 30. Even then its still questionable at best. On top of that earth’s traits are generally not that great.

Move those points over to water, the vitality will serve you better, and you can buff toughness from gear using pvt.

Both builds use dagger/dagger. My personal favorite as well. Not nearly as functional as it was a year ago. Not nearly as functional as it was six months ago. You’ll find that out with trial and error, and hopefully you have more patience than I.

Scepter/dagger, and scepter/focus seem to be the new dagger/dagger. It does middle ground damage, but for some reason people seem to jump and look now like its amazing and new. Its considered the new ele spike, for whatever that’s worth. I remember spike, and this isn’kitten

Use a scepter/focus or scepter/dagger. Go get yourself a fresh air build. For best survival use all pvt gear.

Or

Dagger/dagger. 0-10-0-30-30 or 0-20-0-20-30. For best survival use all pvt gear.

Or use staff 30-30-0-10-0 and stand way back.

If you’re using exotic gear, either use all divinity runes, or just use orbs. Set bonuses from runes actually cut down the stats you gain, for a minor buff or two and the trade off (generally) isn’t worth it. Some people think it is, but some people also can’t do basic math. And those runes that used to be the exception to this have mostly been nerfed into the ground, making them not the exception to this.

If you’re using ascended gear, celestial. As an ele that has effectively less stat points than every other class (taking into consideration health, defense, etc), you need all the base line points you can get to try to make up the difference. Unfortunately it still leaves pretty much all the other classes to use glass cannon builds and still be able to survive. Not a lively strategy, no pun intended, for an ele who will most likely suffer from a severe case of “stabbed in the face and downed syndrome”.

I apologize for my previous post. I’m just extremely disappointed with the state of the elementalist at this point. Wearing lingerie and struggling to keep up with a wvw zerg, then watching a fully armored warrior float by you like rose petals on the wind (all the while having far more defense and health and damage…etc) is extremely telling about where class balance is heading. From the looks of things it won’t be turning around anytime soon.

Yeah, I just came back to. After playing in wvw again, I’d strongly recommend a kittening reroll. This class is just a pile of dog kitten.

I just came back, after not playing for a while (for my own reasons). I just like that phrase used before the game came out. Play the way you want. As an ele, you can do this. You’ll probably suck, but you can do it.

You could also go for a flavor of the month build. Some people seem to think they work ok. I would say they just hit the sweet spot of a “lesser level of suck”. Ele has no good builds. Simple as that. They don’t. They do not. You can argue, but again, you are only hitting the lesser level of suck by comparison to the grand level of suck the class has to begin with.

I could ramble about health, or armor, or whatever everyone else is posting about the class these days, but that’s mostly whining. It doesn’t matter.

If you really want to look at the game is a serious light, lets look at all classes. Again, they all far into various levels of suck. This is very true. You could start yelling about warriors face rolling, or thieves invis. Whatever, its all a level of suck. If you look at their traits lines, they have just as many useless traits as eles do.

In fact, the devs could remove two thirds of the traits (pretty much any two trait lines completely from every class) and have minimal impact on the state of the game.

Why does half of this garbage even exist? Even if the skills or traits aren’t broken, most of them are generally so useless you are kinda left wondering “Why did I even bother using that skill?”…oh yeah…I remember, a filler for the next skill to be cast.

All classes suffer from this issue, not just eles. Eles just have the benefit of seeing it much more frequently due to having many (many, many, MANY) more useless skills to try and fill the void until an actual useful skill is off cool down.

As much as I like the phrase “play the way you want”, it doesn’t work. As an ele, i’d just be happy if I could play with the same quality of life as the other broken classes (ie: all of them).

I read a dev post, and I cannot for the life of me find the link, that eles only really shine with a full suit of ascended gear. Really? So the class generally sucks well past the end of the full story line, and well past the point of mostly being bored with all the rehashed content…then it gets to be a better(?) level of suck? A level of suck on par with the rest of the classes level of suck? The devs don’t see an issue with the way the eles stats are distributed after basically admitting they’re broken until the game is pretty much over?

So an ele requires a full suit of ascended gear to be a lesser level of suck. Ok…so are they with holding ascended gear from all the other classes so the ele can catch up to their level of suck? Nope…so once an ele has full ascended gear, proportionately they are still at the same level of suck below everyone else’s level of suck.

So back at the start, as I stated people are whining about eles armor and health. Hrm, after careful consideration, and a completely out-in-the-left-field comment by a dev, maybe they aren’t. Maybe the devs actually WANT the ele to suck this badly. On the bright side though, when they crippled mobility at least they didn’t go so far as to add an effect to our skills to constantly cripple us on use. Although, at this point, I can’t see that causing anymore harm than the consistant river of nerfs that keep flowing the eles way.

I was there at the begining. I took form as the Elementalist. Guild Wars 1. There were many with me, but they dwindled in numbers as the Elementalist power faded over the years. Some of the others adopted new names, new faces, and some went so far as to change over to some other class.

I stayed true.

Again the world is renewed from destruction. I am, as always, here. I am, again, an Elementalist. My face has changed through the generations, but unlike others, my name has stayed the same.

I am Snow White, I am Elementalist.