Guild Wars 2

WvW kept my interest in the game, until I stopped playing. Originally I came for the awesome gw1 lore, but it fell short.

TooBz.3065:

Just to add one more thought. I think all this grindy content burns goodwill.

My non-scientific anecdotal evidence suggests that when people quit the game because the goodwill is gone they really end up hating the game. The amount of venom I’ve heard from friends who left the game is unbelievable.

People like your friends do exist, but there is the other type too. I quit the game a few weeks ago, because I came to the conclusion that the game is not for me. Anet’s new direction for the game is not what I thought it would be. Some people like it, some people don’t.

I still linger on the forums, in desperate hope that the developers change their minds about the game I really want to love.

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Obviously Mesmer Guardian > Guardian Mesmer.

Mesmer Guardians have a variety of builds, including Phantasmal Duelist inside your own Consecrations such as Hallowed Ground, and +Boon Duration on your clones to make them hit harder and last longer. There is also the Shouts on Clones build which makes Phantasmal Berzerker unstoppable because it now gets Stability and Protection. Since Shouts activate instantly, you combo very fast with very little chance for others to react.

Guardian Mesmers are very niche in that it only compensates for the lack of DPS of the Guardian only by using Time Warp, and also compensates for lack of mobility. Guardian has a very easy time applying Stability already using Stand Your Ground or Hallowed Ground, as well as removing tons of conditions, there is little point in using Mantras instead, specially since you dont have access to the trait line of your secondary profession.

Overall, neither of the combinations above are recommended compared to other combinations.

Mesmer Necros are much more powerful in terms of pure damage, having the ability to Shatter any minions, clones and phantasms. By going Mesmer Necro, you will practically always have your Shatter skills on cooldown though, so be careful when you actually use them.

Necro Mesmers are also very viable, having heavy condition damage and other conditions. Having the ability to apply Fear then Daze or Stun immediately after can keep your opponent’s skillbar locked while condition damage is ticking down. You also get access to much better escape skills(since Necro have none) by taking Blink or Decoy.

Mesmer Engineer can shatter turrets, however turrets will not run towards your opponent like clones do, but you can then ensure more predictability because you always know exactly the locations where the turrets will shatter. A good trick is to stand still and cast all your turrets around you. Your opponent cannot get into the area then, because he will die in one hit if you shatter all those turrets with Mind Wrack. They are left with using range, which means you can easily take them down too with superior ranged DPS.

Mesmer Thief definitely gets more access to Stealth, which is very very good. Getting your clones and phantasm under stealth is strong, but very difficult to use. When you use Stealth on your clones, they do not stop auto-attacking, therefore your clones get revealed. To make a Stealthed clone reach your opponent unseen, you need to activate Mind Wrack right before Stealth, thus your clones stop auto attacking(because you activated a Shatter) and then become invisible. Positioning is also very important here because you might not get all your clones inside Blinding Powder if they are too far from each other. Also, Shadow’s Refuge does NOT work with clones, as they just keep auto-attacking, or walk out of the refuge and get Revealed.
Never go Thief Mesmer. There is very little point in doing so. Stealth is better than Null Field as a Thief, and 50% movement speed while Stealthed trait is as good as using a Portal or Blink anytime. The only saving grace of going Thief Mesmer is an extra Stealth skill as your Elite, there are way better options. Time Warp and Backstab also do not get along, because any smart opponent will get out of the Time Warp are before you are able to get behind them and actually land Backstab.

If you insist on going along with Guardian, your secondary profession should be Ele. You can never go wrong with secondary Ele. Mist Form works with any profession, as well as Conjured Weapons. Guardians being very tanky can double their DPS for a short instant by using Fiery Greatsword, as well as continue to CC foes by using Lightning Hammer right after your own Guardian hammer skills are all on recharge. Ice Bow also makes a very decent substitute for the Guardian’s lack of viable range weapon.

I tried going Ele engineer once, I had up to a total of 41 skills(including elite)! It was quite weak compared to Guardian ele though, but I had a load of fun

But seriously though, have you tried out Necro Guardian? The added stability, aegis, protection and regen helps a lot. You might have less mobility, but you make up for that by being an unstoppable killing machine!

Sirendor.1394:

Arrow.3856:

Assyrian.4827:

Drkxamas.6359:

fugazi.5139:

milo.6942:

AydenStar.4216:

this game is not a serious PvP game and should have never been advertised or treated as one.

+1

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+5

+6 o-O

+7

And another thing. The Living Story does not punish you for missing out on them, because the rewards are small and the story is shallow. But at the same time, if the content is so insignificant that you can miss out on it, what is the point of doing something so insignificant?

I completely agree with you OP, thanks for posting this.

As for the story, GW2s Living Story(or World) is like getting to read 20 pages of a terrible book each 2 weeks, but when you get new pages, the old ones disappear.

On a side, after starting to get into Dota 2, I feel the need for more depth to the combat in gw2 in both PvP and PvE. I log into GW2 every once in a while to check out something new, only to get bored after ~10 minutes. Then I quit and play some Dota instead.

Every now and then a new living story update pops up on the GW2 website newsfeed. I log in on my character, do the first step of the story, try out a few things they added and then I get to the farm portion of the update. Most updates feature a shopping list of achievements.

Now, more achievements isn’t so bad for me, some people enjoy these. What annoys me is that you have to go through those tedious achievements in order to continue the story. I usually get halfways in each LS update, just because doing the achievements is boring.

If Anet won’t give us expanions, at least make the story doable for everyone. Give people like me a chance to go through the entire story ingame, without having to kill 50 this, complete 5 events of this, eat 2 gazillion of that, etc.

Even though most of the story they add is not very deep, and only temporary, I would still like to experience it. I still have a sliver of faith in Anet, and I would be happy if this would be possible. Any thoughts?

/rant mode off

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

The dedicated support class has better defense than the dedicated DPS class? What a shock.

Looking back at how Anet balances elementalists, it seems like we are the dedicated support profession

Leuca.5732:

But engis don’t have a lot of stab… wait, nevermind.

They don’t have as much aoe heal… er, hold on.

We have better boon upt… something or another.

We have 20 weapon skills!

Yeah we have 20 weapo… Wait, engineers have kits, so forget that one too.

Engineers are in a better position right now, since they have received alot of buffs. They used to be the underdogs like ele, but worse. They also fit better into todays meta, since they have more offensive conditions to spam as well as good condition removal.

I’ll definately sign!! That helmet looks so awesome

No, this is my way of fixing it. Instead of click the area, you just click your teammate.

Easy.

You click on the ally you want to revive, proceed to use the signet and voilà, your zerker party member is now up and running!
How is this so hard to implement?

You guys can join us eles in the struggle against the condition meta. I have a guardian too, but I never roam with him because of the amounts of condition spam necros…

I see they buffed consecrations. They are good in an organized team fight, but shouts are great anywhere.

Well I just had to check the dps difference between elementalist dagger and staff autoattack. All damage calculated in fire attunement. Let’s assume we are using 2k power with both weapons. Let’s also assume the weapon strength of the dagger is 238, while the staff is on 270(according to steady weapons). The target we are attacking has 1k armor.

Let’s start with fireball. Each hit deals 0.85 * power * wep strength / armor. In our case:

0.85 * 2000 * 270 / 1000 = 459

One dagger projectile is 0.375 * power * wep strength / armor. In our case:

0.375 * 2000 * 238 / 1000 = 178.5

The dagger autoattack is consisting of three projectiles that all hit in point blank range. The total damage of a point blank hit is 535.5

The attack speed of fireball is 1.4 seconds per cast.
The dagger auto is 1.0 seconds per cast.

This shows that dagger obviously wins in dps, as long as it hits in point blank, aka melee. The staff on the other hand can hit from further than 1200 range, because of arching projectile and AoE hit of up to three targets.

I checked a website, gw2skills.net, and check if warrior dps is higher than ele with autoattack and skill #2(ele stays in fire). With only base damage the warrior dps was higher than the ele dps. But don’t take this for a fact, because I did not include the cast times from wiki, and I also did not include the scaling damage. I could check these variables too to check which one is really highest.

In my opinon, it looks like the greatsword warrior has higher dps than a staff ele. For reasons though, because the ele has access to a bigger pool of skills, and the ele can easily apply burning to further increase dps, which the warrior can’t without a longbow. I also want to mention that even though ele dps is ranged, they are reliant on other allies to cover their disadvantage in mobility and survivability.

And if someone wants to check the damage difference between scepter and staff, or dagger and staff, please do include burning damage too. The burn makes a huge difference.

Just to clarify, I never played the original Guild Wars, nor do I want Guild Wars 2 to have similar mechanics. I love the Z-axis combat, dodging and the fact that movement is important. Guild Wars 1 was static, most people can agree on that.

Sorry for the typing mistake. What I meant was simple.

And I’m not talking against the fluid combat gw2 has with movement skills. Personally I like the dodging and all, even though it makes the game a bit more forgiving when it comes to positioning properly. I just feel like there is no drawback when using certain cooldowns. Just some, not all.

I’ll start off by saying that I’m not trying to convince people the simple nature of Guild Wars 2s combat mechanics is bad. I prefer complex myself, so my opinion is obviously very biased towards complex. But I just want to discuss the matter with you, although it might have been posted before. I tried searching, but the search function is not reliable enough. Also, this is not a post concerning the differences in mechanics between the original Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. It’s not a post about the addition of the holy trinity either. The only other MMO I have ever played is WoW. But that was a long time ago, so I barely remember anything of it.

So, let’s get started!

As most of you should know, GW2’s combat is based on your 10 skills. 5 of them depend on your weapon of choice, the healing skill, utility skills and elite skills can all be chosen depending on your profession(/race in WvWvW and PvE). Having only 10 skills at your disposal is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it is a good thing, it means you have to choose your 10 skills wisely.

Now, each profession has a bunch of different weapon skills, a few healing skills, a bunch of utilities and a handful of elites. Some of the skills available for us to choose from are vastly inferior to others, but that’s another topic I won’t delve into now. But what I don’t like about these skills you can choose from, is that they don’t have alot of depth added to them. Because of the simple nature of the game, the skills offer very simple outcomes, like only damage, or damage with one or more of the few conditions we have. Additionally, there is little to no disadvantage of blowing some cooldowns, as we don’t have any resource management, hence the spamming mentality of most players. There are a few skills that add unique debuffs or buffs, that differ from the other skills, like guardian greatsword #5 and warrior sword #4, elementalist dagger/fire #5 and necromancer death shroud #5.

On the other hand, I still think there should be some skills that are very simple. But what I’m trying to say is that GW2 needs more complex ones that add more depth to the game. The addition of Torment added a little more depth to the game, as it was a new unique debuff people had to pay attention to. Torment also helped a few condition specs in PvE where contributing to a fight is hard when the cap on burning, poison and bleeding has been reached. I think we need more conditions, but new skills to attach them to.

One could argue that adding more depth to the game makes it alot harder for new players to enjoy the game, as there is so much to learn about it. My counter-argument to that would be that complexity in a game adds more options to the players, more room to make mistakes, bigger difference between noob and pro, and it might improve the competetive scene(which in my opinion, is lacking at the moment). If you have played both Dota 2 and League of legends(these are MOBA games), you should have an idea of what depth means. And it sometimes involves more buttons to press, as well as knowing if the enemy has more buttons to press.

That was my thoughts on complex versus simple, but enough of my rambling. What are your thoughts on this matter? Are you for depth, or against it?

PS: Sorry if my english is rubbish, my native language is not English

Yeah that’s a good point Konig. Is it possible to chat with US players from EU in the same guild?

So it’s okay that Im EU? Can we start up an EU branch too? I would love to chat and play with people interested in the guild wars lore

Elidath.5679:

Spectre.6452:

But there is a major difference between the devices in real life and GW2. In real life we don’t have this device that we point against a suspect and it immediately tells us who is guilty or not. That was my point.

The device didn’t do that. It detected the arcane residue left by the compound used to kill Ashford. The culprit had to come in contact with it, so it narrowed the option. Mai Trin was marked as the most exposed, and when confronted gave in immediately (which was really sad imo).
Furthermore, the problem isn’t that the detector was technological. It might even not be (afaik it is vague asuran magitech, modified by a human necromancer). A purely magical artifact doing the same job would be equally bad. The problem was we basically just had to go from point to point without thinking involved (hello, yellow star on the map and “show me” button in the mail), then follow a choice-less conversation. So long for an “investigation”
To sum it up: it’s not the tool, it’s the mechanic that’s flawed.

Oh I forgot the arcane residue, thanks for putting that out there. But still, it felt like a cop out when I did the mission, the residue tracked on Mai Tirin doesn’t cut it for me. I still don’t like the concept of it.

Maybe the quick and temporary LS releases make the developers oversee small things like this. I could see why, considering they have to pump out content very often. I could ramble on about this, but im gonna stop here for your sake.

Jigain.8231:

Spectre.6452:

Instead of asking the suspects questions and checking if they have alibi and so on, you just get this “device” that solves all your problems. You point the thing at your suspect, and POOF, the device instantly tells you if the suspect is guilty or not.

The way that “investigation box” worked is pretty much consistent with real-world investigation as well. It’s nothing different from how heat reveals lemon stains, or how ion-mobility spectrometers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion-mobility_spectrometry) reveals glycerol. If five suspects are checked, and one of the five shows traces of the searched-for substance, that person is to be brought in for questioning, and if that person tries to escape or resist, he or she must be forcibly detained. And that is exactly what happened in this scene. No hocus-pocus truth-detecting machine, just basic chemistry and logic.

That said, I will agree that I was disappointed by the lack of interrogation options.

But there is a major difference between the devices in real life and GW2. In real life we don’t have this device that we point against a suspect and it immediately tells us who is guilty or not. That was my point.

Some months back there was this Living Story update, where the players helps Marjory Delaqua investigate the murder of a charr guy at the beginning of the Dragon Bash festival in Lions Arch. Here’s a link to the wiki page of that certain investigation:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Every_Piece_Matters

Now, there are several suspects here, and you have to find out who is guilty. At first, I thought this was pretty cool, with a crime scene and all that stuff. When you get to the interrogation part it’s almost like you want to kill a baby seal. Instead of asking the suspects questions and checking if they have alibi and so on, you just get this “device” that solves all your problems. You point the thing at your suspect, and POOF, the device instantly tells you if the suspect is guilty or not. Yes, I know Azura can invent all these kinds of devices, but seriously. If you want to have a really compelling story, stay away from such cop outs. It’s almost as every LS update features an Azura with his or her little (cop out)device.

With the introduction of all the techy things to GW2, it seems likely they will do more of this. I sincerely hope they won’t repeat the technology cop out. Anyone else getting annoyed by this?

In this video about pve builds for elementalist, Isaiah answers some questions from the ele forum(WHAT? So they know we exist??). At around 28:12, he brings up the fact that eles are forced into arcana and water traitlines. He says that the balancing team are wanting eles to move away from those traitlines, and mentions fresh air as an example.

This means they are actually paying attention to us, right? There is still hope for us elementalists?

PS: Oh and another thing. In the very end he says that eles are supposed to be weak, but with the advantage of being the jack of all trades, master of none. Are we doomed to be forever weak? If this was up to me, eles should have alot of skills, really high skillcap, but high reward.

In this video about pve builds for elementalist, Isaiah answers some questions from the ele forum(WHAT? So they know we exist??). At around 28:12, he brings up the fact that eles are forced into arcana and water traitlines. He says that the balancing team are wanting eles to move away from those traitlines, and mentions fresh air as an example.

This means they are actually paying attention to us, right? There is still hope for us elementalists?

PS: Oh and another thing. In the very end he says that eles are supposed to be weak, but with the advantage of having all kinds of skills. Are we doomed to be forever weak? If this was up to me, eles should have alot of skills, really high skillcap, but high reward.

In this video about pve builds for elementalist, Isaiah answers some questions from the ele forum(WHAT? So they know we exist??). At around 28:12, he brings up the fact that eles are forced into arcana and water traitlines. He says that the balancing team are wanting eles to move away from those traitlines, and mentions fresh air as an example.

This means they are actually paying attention to us, right? There is still hope for us elementalists?

PS: Oh and another thing. In the very end he says that eles are supposed to be weak, but with the advantage of having all kinds of skills. Are we doomed to be forever weak? If this was up to me, eles should have alot of skills, really high skillcap, but high reward.

ThiBash.5634:

Spectre.6452:

You don’t necessarily make it up in survivability when going signets. You are VERY prone to stunlocks/chain stuns, which will then kill you. With cantrips you have atleast a slight chance to move away.

S/F would help with that. You can use Air #3 to blind your attacker and weaken the spike, or Earth #5 as a stopgap stunbreaker.

If you are using focus, you could pop obby flesh to negate the stunlock entirely. My point was, signets would not help much in this case.

Treborlavok.3504:

Retsuko.2035:

FrownyClown.8402:

Also things to consider are signets themselves are terrible.

Totally agree with this. Using signets over other utilities is just bad, especially in WvW. Of course, almost anything goes in PvE…

I think it’s to Each their own, but for wvw I’d only recommend using d/f with signets. S/f works too but I think you have more sustainability in dagger /f.

Running signets over cantrips and off hand dagger you only lose a little mobility but make up for it in survivability without having to go into a bunker build so you can also keep nice sustained and burst dps.

You don’t necessarily make it up in survivability when going signets. You are VERY prone to stunlocks/chain stuns, which will then kill you. With cantrips you have atleast a slight chance to move away.

I used to run Signet of restoration in wvw, and I loved it. But after several encounters with dhuumfire necros and immobilize/bleed rangers I instantly switched over to ether renewal. Signet of water is great, but falls short versus ether renewal when it comes to condition spam.

Imo, the best signet(and the only useful one) is signet of Air. It is a stunbreaker on 30 sec cooldown which gives a passive speedboost. On the other hand, the passive side of it is somewhat redundant if you have perma-swiftness.

ThiBash.5634:

- snip -

Oh, my bad then, I see. But It won’t change the fact that I would pick this skill for the stunbreaker rather than the conditions, if I ever did so. I love cantrips, but it would be cool if they made glyphs and especially signets more appealing. And by making them more appealing, Im talking about buffing them, not by nerfing cantrips into oblivion.

I just want to add, mistform is now being nerfed. It’s not invurerability anymore, it works like endure pain on war. Anet loves to nerf those useful utilities
Why? When did we get the same base health and toughness as warriors? It’s not like we can survive like them, so why nerf our defensive cababilities?

Even though cantrips have been nerfed, as long as I have played elementalist, I have played with 2-3 of them. Why? When I slot my utilities, I want utilities that bring something useful, something which I really need in my fights.

Signets? Some of them are ok, but decent at best. Except signet of restoration. I love it.

Arcana skills? Can be quite useful, but only wave suits my playstyle. 3 blocks means jack kitten against a guild, 5 crit hits is meh with d/d(it is mostly aoe), the projectile blast deals the same damage as wave, but wave hits 5 people. Arcane wave is nice imo, fits my playstyle. Semi-low cooldown on a damage burst + blast finisher is great.

Glyphs? Glyph of renewal can be a death sentence in certain fights, at least those I participate in. Lesser/greater elemental? Can be useful, but they are too slow for my movement to be any useful/dies to aoe. Glyph of Storms? The static playstyle of this doesn’t work out for me. My enemies won’t stand still, they will just move away from this. GoEP? I already have alot of fire, and enough cripple. More immobilize would be better. Weakness? Very good, but I don’t sit in air all day waiting for it to proc. Chilling? This seems as a very good one, as chilling hurts your cooldowns. But I don’t switch to water to land autos, I switch to water to heal up, then switch back to something offensive.

Cantrips? Stunbreaks alone cannot help against the amount of cc groups of warriors/guardians/elementalists can put out, so stability is a necessity(Armor of Earth). Mistform? The only utility slot that lets you avoid tons of damage, while also letting you reposition. Good luck not bringing this to a big fight. Lightning flash? The utility it offers is really great in some situations. It lets you reposition, land a churning earth more easily and also adds more chasing/escaping options. Cleansing Fire? Without the stunbreaker it is decent at best. GoEP stole its stunbreak >:C

The thing about GoEP, is that I feel like the skill is working towards itself. Would’nt it be most optimal to pop it as the fight starts, so you get more conditions in? But then you would waste the stunbreak. If you wait for the stunbreak to be useful, you wasted some potential of those conditions. It might be useful for some people.

Also, in my own opinion, the conditions you get aren’t worth the slot you put them in. What if they tweaked the skill so that it gave other conditions? Chill and weakness is fine, but cripple? How about immob? How about torment in fire attune?

We had some great fights versus VotF last night! I also liked fighting AFK and SVD
We were outmanning them sometimes, we havent been so many in an event before.

I look forward to more good fights

I was dissappointed to see that GROU only wanted to fight when they outnumbered us. Oh well, it was fun anyways

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

- snip -

I like some of your ideas, but here are my thoughts on them:

Elementalist
I like it, but maybe we should get boons based on the attunement of the ele? Also, a skill that removes boons or inflicts many conditions at once is a good counter to eles(this should be done carefully as we already have effective counters towards eles).

Engineer
I agree with this, as alot of the engineers damage comes from conditions. But I would have it steal the elixir C instead, which converts conditions into boons. It would be a weaker version of the engineer skill of course, but it will be a mimic and counter at the same time.

Guardian
I think stealing from a guardian should either give retaliation, aegis or some skill that converts boons into conditions on the target. This would either mimic or counter the profession.

Mesmer
Yup it’s fine

Necromancer
Considering the necro already has few stunbreaks and stability, I think the aoe fear is good as it is. This skill mimics the necro.

Ranger
I agree, its fine. Also the visuals you get from it is really cool, you can plant a tree wherever you want!

Thief
It’s good, additional access to stealth is great.

Warrior
Never really liked this one. Even though the damage output is good, it puts you in a vurnerable position. It’s like you scream to everyone around you: “CC me please!”. It doesn’t counter the warrior at all. Also it doesn’t mimic either, as nobody runs with offhand axe xD. I’m not really sure what to put here, maybe a mace stun/daze?

I would not like eles to have a cooldown on swapping weapons. What if you swapped to the wrong weapon? Now you have to wait 1 minute and a half just to swap back, and I think that would alot more annoying. The problem of yours doesn’t annoy me, so it might just be a pet peeve of yours.

I have been playing elementalist for only a short time now, recently started. But there is one thing that bugs me. How come Anet added a stunbreaker to the skill Glyph of Elemental Power? What purpose does it serve? From what I understand, this skill gives a minor boost to conditions, and it also breaks stuns. But then you would have to choose between using the skill offensively as condition boost, or wait till you need it as a stunbreaker. Isn’t this skill negating itself? And if you really need a stunbreaker, there are better options(armor of earth, mist form, arcane shield).

Even if you used the skill for more conditions, is it really that good? Is there anyone here who uses this skill? If so, can you explain to me what is good about it, and how it’s best used?

Oh, and another thing. I also don’t like that they removed stunbreaking from lightning flash. I can understand that the skill itself would bring too much utility, but the skill bugs out sometimes without stability. If you get cc-ed, then teleport away, you might get stuck, unable to do anything in 2-3 seconds(even after cc ends). With a stunbreaker aswell they could increase the cooldown or something.

What do you guys think, do you like GoEP, or the removal of stunbreak from LF?

Straegen.2938:

I agree with you that Rangers are lackluster. Pets are meant to be the fun mechanic but in big fights the pet is as much a hindrance as a help. I really like playing my Ranger in PvE but park the class for dungeons and WvW.

Compared to the other classes mentioned:

Warriors: High in combat speed, tons of control and banners rock. Probably my most fun class at the moment

Guardians: Alt Healing is ridiculously good making shouts phenomenal. Standing in the middle of a massive group of enemies and not dying is tremendously satisfying. Even retaliation has its funny moments.

Mesmers: Heavy group utility (portals, veil, null field) as well as the entire clone system

Engineer: Bomb and grenade kits along with recent rune changes have made them awesome… 1900 range on spammable AoE grenades is wicked fun.

Necros/Eles: Both fall into a similar category… nothing sexy put really effective when played well

Thieves: Stealth… this is my go to class for roaming.

Even though I don’t play ranger, I agree that they are kind of lackluster. In WvW they are the easiest target. The pet is supposed to be a useful part of the rangers kit, but really, we can just ignore the pet and go straight for the ranger.

As for the mesmer part you said, I don’t fully agree. Mesmers can be really fun, they have cool and interesting skills like decoy, blur and illusionary leap. But the glamour build mesmer(veil, feedback, null field and/or portal) is the most boring one. In my WvW guild we have too few mesmers. The group support you get from glamour build is really great(also mandatory in organized wvw), but also REALLY boring. Sometimes you will be lucky and have the privilege of portaling a golem somewhere.

And for the ele/necro part, as it is now eles are the weakest profession alongside the ranger. The ele used to be OP, then was nerfed into oblivion. Yes, they can pull off some cool things, but with all the work you put into your combos, rotations, managing cooldowns without seeing them and so on, you will only be on par with a warrior. And the warrior needs to do alot less. I could rant for a long time about the state of elementalists, but there is no need for that here.

Back to the topic, it’s time we eles and you rangers get some love from the devs. I must admit rangers need the most attention now, I cannot fathom why Anet prefers to continue buffing the warriors, who are fine now.

Thanks for the help, and GoatCheese, I will take a look at your build and try it out in spvp area

Hmm, that’s weird. My personal experience is that ele is more fun than any other class once I hit around level 30-50. In level 41 I could do a raptor group of 12, each level 45-46. I started in Sparkfly Fen in level 40, although the the area starts at level 45. I even did the big level 45 drake mother in level 40 without much help. For me it feels like I’m playing my guardian once more, I enjoy it so much! I’m d/d btw.

Hey fellow elementalists!

A few weeks ago i made an ele, and im still in the leveling stage. So far I have enjoyed the profession alot, as if it was made for me. The skills, the attunement swapping and the flow of the combat all appeal to me. But I need some help regarding gear when the time comes and I reach level 80.

My favourite weapon set is d/d, and I intend to use it for a long time. I feel like i need some defence in order to survive, but what kind? Is soldiers good enough? And if so, what kind of trinkets? Are celestial any viable? (I like the ascended trinkets with celestial stats, like the ancient mursaat thing) I am gonna play both wvw and pve, but mostly wvw, where I prefer small scale fights and roaming.

Just noticed after my recent Arah run, that all the dungeon vendors sell items called Offering. Arah vendor sells Offering of Zhaitan, CoE vendor sells Offering of Knowledge and so on.

Anyone know what these are for? Also, I did not find these on gw2database yet. I did not link an image, because it is easy to check it ingame.

milo.6942:

Leo G.4501:

milo.6942:

If you’re not depending on your teammates then what are they there for?

It depends to what extent the dependance leads to.

From my perspective, I like to get things done via being flexible and self-reliant. Waiting for someone to heal me or protect me or needing to rely CC, stun-locks or interrupts to succeed comes with its own drawbacks:

1. It limits group config. Some encounters, suddenly you need melees who can stand against extreme damage so your light-armor stealth bursters have no place. Other encounters, you need high CC to keep foes in place and interrupts to keep foe action limited so much support goes on the bench. Encounters putting a meter stick to your group healing means you have to have it. Bundle it all together and you’re pretty much predetermining exactly what you’re going to do.

2. Repetitive boredom. Sorry, I have minor ADD, but I can’t be arsed watching health bars all kitten ed day…or cycling attack chains over and over…or spamming buffs. It’s cool to do every now and again to fill in a hole, but sometimes I like to swap and mix it up.

3. Punishes generalists. The more specialized your tactics become the less wanted generalists are. Those are the guys that can still do damage, throw out some spot support/healing, snare the enemy for a short time, etc. They are obsolete in your situations because you’re going to have particular team members fulfilling those roles full time.

I’m sure there are other points, but this is all my opinion. I do want tactics, advanced play and combos. I do not want holy trinity. If City of Heroes could let you succeed with all tankers or obliterate with all blasters or mix all offense with no support or roll over everything with all support or generally let you mix and match and play off each other’s strengths, I feel this game could do the same. That is, they can make support and CC and healing more substantial in the game but by no means would success hinge on it. Merely how that success would be achieved.

If I were suggesting ideas, it would likely start with combo fields and finishers as well as how the enemy utilizes them.

to summarize my points since i feel i’ve been wandering off topic: combat is boring because it’s not challenging. managing energy presents a challenge. being an important part of a team presents a challenge. relying on your teammates presents a challenge. i mention gw1 so often because it did many things right, and you have consistently misrepresented it. gw1 was a team based game. gw2 is a game where you attack things next to others. also as others have touched on, the way the content is presented is boring and isn’t very challenging.

So you want gw2 to have kind of the same combat mechanics as gw1, or?

Also, if the game has not presented as challenge for you yet, why aren’t you looking for one then?

As Gurugeorge said; the combat is as deep or shallow as you make it. No wonder you complain about no variety in the gw2 combat when you restrict yourself into spamming #1.

Iavra.8510:

I’m currently playing P/D condi-thief. CC is probably the best counter since the thief class doesn’t really offer much stunbreakers (honestly, Blinding Powder should be a stunbreaker).

You can still run shadowstep + inflitrators signet for 3 stunbreakers in total. P/d thief stays ranged so you can use skill #3 to get away from melee range cc.

selan.8354:

Spectre.6452:

selan.8354:

Luisedgm.2375:

I don’t even care how it is fixed, i just want to have a viable condition build!

yeah me too as a mesmer i have now with 1.7k condition dmg…a condition that tickles the enemy and doesnt stack due to bb nerf and he socalled bugfix…bye bye confusion and the rest of conditions is pretty much rng based…anet, sry but change it. this is terribleand i think EVERY single class should have a viable condition. and with viable i mean strong enough, so i don’t need to be forced into a dps with a little bit condi build, i wan A REAL CONDITION BUILD!

I’m starting to get this feeling, that it is not condition builds in general that are unviable, but certain build paths on certain professions. I have tried condition damage thief for a long time now, and with much success(it was fun too). Most people who complain on the conditions being underpowered are usually necromancers or mesmers. I think the problem is within those two classes, rather than the conditions themselves.

I’m not sure where you are getting at, because confusion still stacks in intensity. Confusion was nerfed with good reason. And what do you mean conditions are rng based?

it dosent stack well at all. as bb was nerfed and that was 1 of the major traits that mad confusion stack.then with rng based i mean stuff like chaosstorm that applies something random which i cant control, traits that cause a random condition when shattered and a sigil that applies a random boon. mesmers have nothing apart from confusion. thieves have poison and i have seen a pretty good bleed build. if u spec into glams as a mesmers u have no power and or anything else that will hit viably, but that was a choice we made. we gave up power to deal condition dmg.

So the problem lies within the mesmers class, which does not have any viable condition damage builds. But I don’t know, maybe Anet don’t want mesmers to have a huge condition damage build outside confusions. For example, Guardians do not have a viable condition damage build either. But of course as Guardian that’s not something you would want to spec into. I guess if you want a viable condition build on mesmer you need to make posts in the mesmer forum.

Hope it helps

When I played condition thief myself, the hardest counter used to be zerker thieves instakilling me. I was pistol/dagger though, not dagger/dagger.

Just realized one thing. Sword skill #2 removes one condition on second cast, which can be used to counter his bleed damage.

The longer the fight the better for him. If you cannot burst his health down low with some pws he is probably gonna end up winning. If you run into these alot you might want to trait for condition removal and healing in stealth.

Vayne.8563:

milo.6942:

Spectre.6452:

Why not try to come up with solutions to make the combat in gw2 better rather than just telling everyone how shallow it is/comparing it to other games?

1. lots of people have already
2. they can refer to a little known game called “guild wars 1” maybe someone has played it?

Actually I don’t believe Guild Wars 1 had better combat that Guild Wars 2. It had better skill variety..but actual combat wasn’t as good in my opinion.

People confuse things like builds with combat…builds are builds and combat is combat. I wouldn’t want to give up either dodging or jumping. I wouldn’t want to have to stand still to cast. I’m not even very sad about giving up energy.

And of course, the number of skills in Guild Wars 1 made it completely impossible to balance over time. People say Guild Wars 2 is imbalanced, but it was nothing to what Guild Wars 1 became.

I agree. I think Anet wants to learn from GW1 and balance the skills before adding more.

Why not try to come up with solutions to make the combat in gw2 better rather than just telling everyone how shallow it is/comparing it to other games?