I strongly doubt they will tweak the attunement swapping at this point.
My idea of a band/aid fix is to greatly, greatly improve the barrier numbers to the point that this actually feels like a tanky class, and the twitch 4/5 skills aren’t as critical. Given how low the damage is, there ought to be some inherent survivability built in anyway.
Dual attack skills give 384 barrier with full celest gear. No one is ever going to have more healing power than that. Considering the insane rate that it degrades, 1k needs to be the bare minimum to even keep this into consideration, right? Even though every class except Ele AA’s for more than that.
Also, consider that a single press of Arcane Shield blocks almost the same amount of damage given the new burst from Holosmith, stun break, and even explode damage back. Blowing everything to create a subpar barrier is just not worth it.
Arcane Shield never leaves my bar, and that’s not changing. I must be misunderstanding the purpose of barrier. I get that it’s a demo weekend and numbers are subject to be tweaked, but the numbers are so far off from usability that I can’t see a situation where ele is able to self sustain through it.
Weaver staff may be used in PvE but no one will use sword.
Gonna add my two coppers:
1. Damage is way too low on sword, and being kited will result in a quick loss for you. I play d/d and it at least has a 600 range auto on water. I think sword needs this too on one of the attunements.
2. Barrier might as well not even exist. It’s useless in its current form. A single auto attack will rid it, even with extra stacks built up. Also, it decays waaaaaaaay too quickly. It’s in dire need of a numbers increase across the board.
3. I know a lot of people are complaining about the attunement cds, but honestly, I’m okay with it. I do think it serves as a good balance point if the above 2 are fixed.
Barrier should lessen the necessity to have to get to your 4/5 skills quickly, but in it’s current state it does not come even close to that.
Full celestial gear gives 378 barrier on dual attack. It’s not even worth it to trait for it.
Weaver has:
1. Lowest base health
2. Lowest base armor
3. No support
4. Melee range
This, to me, is a perfect storm of the highest risk playstyle in the game. This should easily amount to the highest DPS IMO, not just for the top 5% of PvPers who don’t have to trait for barrier and can memorize every possible combination and rotation of attunement swaps.
As it stands, it seems to hit like a wet noodle. I know there is a huge learning curve, but at the very, very least I thought we’d finally be getting a spec where AAing isn’t a complete waste of time. Every other spec I tried seemed to out damage this one, and I hadn’t even traited weaver for any extra vitality or healing power, which it will need to survive.
I didn’t try it this weekend but I’m certain a glassy staff build can out DPS this without button mashing.
1. Autoattack chains deal so low of damage it made me cringe
2. Traits are garbage and you sacrifice a lot of useful and important options with other specialization choices
3. Difficult to swap between attunements thanks to the cooldowns
4. Utilities and elite seem really lackluster.
5. Annoying that when you’re using weaver you lose access to half of your skills as a tradeoff for getting a single twin skill when you’re dually attuned to elements. If it changed just ONE skill, it’d be fine… but for example what the hell am I supposed to do when I have staff equipped and I’m on fire/air, and I have lava font but no meteor shower? That is terribly designed.I want this to be a competitive way to play elementalist in PvE and if it’s better damage to take things that existed for the past few years than everything offered from this then what was the point of designing it? Also it feels like Arenanet is too scared to decide whether or not weaver is meant to add anything to power ele or if they want it to be only useful for condi builds.
This isn’t a PvE spec. Barriers are going to do nothing against the damage you see in PvE.
global cooldown on elements feels terrible. takes away all the reactive gameplay and usually you don’t even stay in an element for 4 seconds.
This. Global cooldown indeed feels terrible. Elementalist gameplay is based on reacting to a certain situation and attuning to an element where you will find what you need. Weaver kills this idea on two levels:
1) Global cooldown doesn’t allow you to react anymore, it forces a rotation with fixed order. Fixed because if you mess it up, it’s really hard to go back to it because the order of attunements matters now for your most important #3 skills.
2) Offhand skills are not directly accessible anymore.I guess you must play a rotation with weaver like old d/d times. There’s no way to avoid it in pvp.
I’m far from a top tier player but I just don’t understand how Weavers are supposed to stay alive in the front line. Barrier goes away pretty quickly and isn’t a huge amount on top of your health. There are no other passive damage mitigations and you can’t be reactive either, with the way attunement swapping works.
Maybe it’s my imagination but a holosmith in photon mode was doing like double the damage as anything I could come up with as a weaver.
I wish this map was more like dry top and the silverwastes. Event chains and metas without being too grindy, and verticality that rewards exploration, without being as confusing as TD.
The zone overall had nothing interesting going on. I didn’t see a single event chain. It’s nice to have a zone that feels like a core tyria map but ultimately I didn’t see any reason to do anything more than once. I’m hoping there is a more complex event chain that was just disabled because it was a demo.
I wish HoT masteries weren’t totally forgotten. Having a few bouncing mushrooms would have been nice.
More difficult/annoying areas like the mining cave in the northwest don’t come with any additional reward, so why would anyone go in there?
(edited by The Great Al.2546)
Well it is good you guys are making conclusions based on a demo that is only part of a map without all events, meta’s and who knows what else.
That’s kind of the point of a demo: to sell the game.
Exactly. It’s easier to draw conclusions based on what we can currently see, as opposed to speculating a best case scenario that we have no idea about. Of course it’s just my opinion, and I would never cancel my preorder, but I don’t believe this map sells the game. I ran around on my mount for 10-15 minutes and saw the same 2-3 non-chained events and nothing else.
As I predicted mounts are the worst of it all, making the map feels super small. Pretty disappointing :/
Where is all the exploration that were promised?! And please don’t point that we only explored a small part of a huge map in the demo…How can you ask that question and not expect to get “small part of a huge map” as an answer. It’s a demo not a full expansion.
I don’t feel fully understand the ‘small part of a huge map’. Unless I am wildly mistaken it looks like the demo area is 2/3 of the map.
exactly, its even more like 3/4 but the point is, the map is boring, flat, uneventful and there is no point in running around twice. There is nothing to explore after the 10 min on the back of a fast moving raptor. I saw it all.
Well it is good you guys are making conclusions based on a demo that is only part of a map without all events, meta’s and who knows what else.
If this map is actually lively with events and event chains and metas, and they are all disabled because for some reason 1/3 of the map is inaccessible during the preview, then that makes absolutely no sense. This is a preview weekend to try and convince people to buy the expansion. The map in its current state doesn’t do that.
As I predicted mounts are the worst of it all, making the map feels super small. Pretty disappointing :/
Where is all the exploration that were promised?! And please don’t point that we only explored a small part of a huge map in the demo…How can you ask that question and not expect to get “small part of a huge map” as an answer. It’s a demo not a full expansion.
I don’t feel fully understand the ‘small part of a huge map’. Unless I am wildly mistaken it looks like the demo area is 2/3 of the map.
The map is boring because there are barely any events. It’s not clear if the event chains were disabled because this is a preview, but if so, that was a bad idea IMO. It’s nice to explore this once but why would anyone come back to this zone?
The sword is very short range (like 100-120 I think?) and without in-combat weapon swap, you are basically committing to being in melee range while in combat. Neither of your offhand choices (dagger or focus) will change that.
It’s not yet clear to me if the weaver trait line is going to bring enough inherent survivability for this to be viable, it really depends on how useful the Barrier mechanic is.
I’m kind of surprised we got sword instead of GS. With GS we could’ve potentially had a dervish-like PbAoE playstyle. Will sword feel unique, or maybe just a more condition heavy version of dagger?
I strongly dislike the whole ‘special action’ key and I think the last thing this game needed was another reflex mechanic. Not to mention that the default key binding is in an incredibly awkward place.
The instances are getting way too long. This is just a personal preference I guess.
The last fight was just awful as an elementalist. I would have happily chosen a tankier build except I don’t have different armor and weapon stat sets for every possible scenario. It didn’t even take terribly long but it just wasn’t fun at all.
The last boss fight was challenging because it was ridiculously reflex based. There isn’t really any strategy involved. I don’t think this is a good game mechanic at all.
Is the warhorn just for the extra boon uptime?
It’s been years since I’ve used anything other than a staff. I understand that in the open world pretty much anything is viable, but in terms of DPS how does scepter dagger compare to staff?
Mike,
The GW1 formula of expansions (campaigns) being primarily a large new region with a bunch of new skills kept everyone pretty happy. Given your map designing tools and dynamic event system, I would imagine that large updates like this would be reasonably quick to market. Will the next expansion be along these lines, with some masteries and adventures sprinkled in? If so, can we expect a new region any time soon? Even with the fixes to the HoT maps, I don’t know how receptive players will be to redoing those zones again. I can’t speak for everyone, but I at least always crave a new world to discover!
Thanks for your time.
I like the size of it and that it captures so many aspects of the game, world bosses, squads, new QoL options, balances, wvw fixes, gliding etc
My main concern was how small balance was compared to the early previews. For example ele sceptre was mentioned as a key change, yet remained almost untouched – basically the early communication of intent did not always match what had actually changed.
Overall it felt positive though
Agreed. I don’t know how many more patches it will take to make ele scepter actually usable. And there are still overall way too many unused utility skills. Overall the patch is a step in the right direction but there are still issues with some professions.
I am having this issue as of the past few days as well (presumably related to the windows 10 update).
Interestingly, a few weeks ago I reinstalled Guild Wars 1, ankitten ow having the exact same problem with that game as well.
The problem is that even if you are on a fully populated map, if you aren’t following a commander tag you are still going to get the feeling that you are by yourself. Solo events take too long to complete.
Rebound, its a good ability, but its kinda Like a last trigger move then anything to use for situations, u press it as a panic button to try survive, on paper it looks good but tbh its just a weaker version of what the berserker has now.. the healings pretty low.
Rebound is the worst elite for the class that already has the worst elites in the game. The healing is too low to do anything, and if it doesnt wind up proccing, the best you get is a random aura. Not to mention that it has absolutely nothing to do with the theme of the class whatsoever.
I wasn’t expecting an easier cheaper method of doing it.
Shouldn’t it be cheaper, though? If it’s no cheaper than buying it through the TP, then what is the purpose of this?
I personally think the new spec is great. I have tried it only in PVE and some WVW but so far so good. The Dagger/Warhorn i found to be the most fun and destructive to play with. The Staff was good in massive aoe fights where getting close was a hassle. The Scepter/Warhorn is ok, wouldn’t do PVP/WVW with it though. I’m yet to try D/D or pvp with any builds.
I’m hearing a lot of “we just wait for overload and stay in attunement”. I disagree with that entirely, especially in the Dagger/Warhorn build. Lets remember we are Elementalists, the jack of all trades. If your just tapping 1,2,3 in air spec and waiting for overload…. tut, tut. I’m sure there is more you can be doing then waiting to use something. Im very rarely in the same spec for much longer than 1 overload, if i even use it.
Survivability is a lot higher, in my near full Zerker gear. The constant heals from auras is nice and it seems like i have almost perma-fury. Of course i speced into the auras and i am liking it nicely. I’m hearing a lot of hate about the tempest but i think ppl just need to open there minds a bit more and use there own brains. Not wait for a build that is spoon fed to them and told “this is best, use it or gtfo” Theres lots of flexibility now, be creative and remember to enjoy this great game.
If you are going to attunement swap then you may as well take arcane and just use base ele.
I am talking PvE here:
- The 5 second cooldown upon entering an attunement: This is fine for Fire and Air, but it screws Water and Earth. Water is a heal and cleanse, yet you have to wait 5 seconds to use it, which is ridiculous. Earth is a CC, which would be good for break bars, yet having to wait 5 seconds kills your damage. It is also a blast finisher, that you can never time because you need 9 seconds.
This is the problem that I have as well.
How do I know that I will need a blast finisher in 5 seconds?
How do I know that I will need an aura after an overload completes? Aura application should not be semi random like that. at the very least, it should happen at the start of the overload.
Swiftness on overload? totally useless in PvE, should not be a baseline trait.
My biggest problem is that the base class was clearly designed with attunement swapping in mind. If you try to stay in one attunement with a scepter you will lose your mind because the AAs are so bad.
So if there is going to be an elite spec that requires attunement camping, there needed to be a MH weapon that would have been better designed for this purpose, as well as traits that give bonuses the longer you stay in an attunement. Even something like the ‘on swap’ bonuses changing to ‘on swap and every 7 (or so) seconds thereafter, while you stay in the attunement’ would have gone a long way to fundamentally making this elite specialization synergize with the class as a whole.
Actually i love my tempest in pvp, it’s really a strong spec.
The warhorn may be useless, but who cares?
Overload are the best, especially air overload with marauder amulet, and if u can’t survive with the perma vigor and regen given by auras…well maybe u are not a good pvp player.
Stop asking for buffs and let’s just hope they don’t nerf it as they always did with anything good they gave to ele.Thank you.
So the warhorn is unusable, shouts are unusable, and you like one out of the four overloads, so you don’t think that buffs are warranted?
I would add that warhorn skins and animations are not that inspiring either. The rest has already been said. Better luck next elite spec.
I’m not going to play the same old build for 2 more years until they make a new elite spec for the elementalist that could only “perhaps” be half-good and 1 new pvp map.
Other games are going to be released very soon.
See that your problem you wanted tempest to replaces ele for you and that is not what elite spec where made to be. Ask for new things for ele tempest is not an ele +1.
Any way WH fills a support roll and if most ppl play ele type class for its dmg then ya it would be the worst wepon for them but the WH is still on an ele type class so to call any wepon the worst on it is a major miss judgment of what your talking about in the first places due to weapons on this class type having at least 6 skills where on other classes type they have 2 to 3. The WH on war or the forces on others etc.. are the worst weapons.
I can almost certainly generate more party might by taking a dagger and using the working fire field with the 2 blast finishers on earth.
It’s not complete trash, but it is still a lacking weapon.
Both earth and water are quite good I would say,
Earth and Water are good on all of our offhands. The problem is that dagger and focus are SIGNIFICANTLY better in fire and air (where let’s face it, most eles are going to spend 95% of their time, especially in PvE).
Almost every skill on warhorn is worse than the counterpart on focus or dagger. the fire skills got nerfed to the point that they are awful, and air #5 is bad as well.
The shouts are very underwhelming. Why doesn’t the air one give an aura? I have been running a reaper and those shouts feel so much more impactful.
Maybe one of these years rebound will be replaced with something that fits the spec.
FYI, this is something we’re aware of and do indeed want to fix. The issue with it is a bit more in-depth, however, so it’s taking a bit longer.
Thanks!!
How are you maintaining 25 stacks of might with this?
The 50% increase you see in shroud is from Death Perception.
Decimate Defenses is calculated individually for every enemy and therefore does not show up in your hero panel.
Right, I know the 50% was from DP, sorry I was not clear. Thanks for the explanation, didn’t realize it doesn’t show up in the hero panel.
I have 32% crit chance. I see it successfully go up to 82% when I am in shroud, but it does not seem to change at all based on whether I am hitting vulnerable foes.
I agree with the OP. Even if you only can complete two HP a day, you’ll have your entire elite spec unlocked in under a month. Just enjoy the expansion, the elite specs are fine even not fully unlocked.
Is death/blood/reaper the optimal reaper build at this point? Not soul reaping?
I am finally switching to Reaper. The content is difficult and tempest is the worst spec you can have as a solo ele. I find my character alone most of the time, and there are just no advantages to using a tempest spec in this scenario.
From a PvE perspective, I’ve been running Scepter because the enemies hit pretty hard and I don’t want to be stuck in too close range against champs or bosses. Honestly see myself switching back to staff or dagger/focus offhand in a few days because -
phoenix + wildfire is bugged
fire #4 is broken still otherwise useless if I understand the changes correctly
air warhorn #5 is just awful and 4 isnt much better
Pheonix + Wildfire doesn’t stack might.
I have randomly experienced an issue where my character is ‘stuck’. my movement keys do not move my character (and no, I don’t have any conditions on me and i am out of combat). I know my WASD keys are working because they work in chat.
dodge rolling seems to fix this issue.
This has been a problem since the first BWE. Honest, at this point I am only using warhorn because it is ‘new’. Within a few days, I will be going back to dagger or focus, or potentially even back to staff.
SUPERIOR RUNES OF THE TEMPEST
(1) +25 Toughness
(2) -25% Incoming Cripple Duration
(3) +50 Toughness
(4) +15% aura duration
(5) +100 Toughness
(6) When you activate a shout skill, you gain aegis for 8 seconds. (Cooldown: 30 seconds)That is a pretty horrible rune set.
Why? One of the biggest complaints about overloading is its too dangerous to use it on a squishy light armor class.
-25% cripple seems fairly pointless, as well as 15% aura. Auras themselves aren’t even that good (except earth aura) – the main benefit of them are the additional effects that proc on application.
Additionally, the overload trait for auras on overload application are for 5s auras. 15% of that is less than 1 extra second.
Few simple changes to help fix the overload risk -
1. Move the aura generation to the start of the overload
2. Move the ‘protection on aura’ trait from earth to tempest (pleeease)
3. 1-2 stacks of stability as a minor trait.
Extremely unlikely but potentially interesting GM-level traits:
1. Dodging won’t cancel overload
2. Your overload cannot be interrupted, but you take x% more damage while overloading
Phoenix should destroy projectiles.
Ok, after thinking it through like a crazy monkey here’s a cool idea to provide stability: what if one of our shouts (you choose it, not sure which one fits better) gave self-stability? You may question “oh, but we got Armor of Earth already”, well first it’s a cantrip so shout-boosting trait won’t help us, second it’s too long cooldown, we need a shorter one so we aligns with overloads 20sec-cooldown. Still, it shall open up for choice depending on the shout, like “is it time to use it and lose this particular shout effectiveness, or hold on till we can combo this shout+overload?”.
This option would allow a rework for Harmonious Conduit, and not break shout synergy they’re bringing with this very elite spec (Tempestuous Aria is arguably the best master trait). If you think we would be getting too much if a shout gave stability, remember it would be self-only, and it could be very short duration and about 2 stacks (ideally), striving the best way not to render it OP, and at the same time Earthen Proxy and Harmonious Conduit could provide some better options (condi damage? better healing/defensive/supportive options? etc).
I’d like to hear your thoughts.
I don’t like the idea of a ‘must have’ skill/trait. Wherever stability is, unless it is an inherent bonus, is going to be a must have. Overloads are almost guaranteed to fail without the stability, so it just needs to be inherent to the overload.
Speedy Conduit should be merged with Lucid Singularity.
Stability on overload should be the Minor Master. Harmonious Conduit will need some other buff in order to compete with Tempestuous Aria, which should have the Shout CD reduction. It’s already been noted that Earthen Proxy doesn’t really do enough. I’d LOVE to see the Protection on Aura moved to this trait as well.
All of the Major Adepts are pretty weak IMO. Unstable Conduit would be better at the beginning of the overload.