Guild Wars 2

yeah as some folks have said the sword 3 has a pretty good damage spike+vuln, the combo with fire has the vortexes, earth gives you a big cc (that can proc a lightning strike if traited). the auto attack might fall short, but a weapon shouldn’t be judged by auto attack alone. air dagger 2 &3 just don’t give you much offensive power

Tempest feedback, mostly from open world pve in verdant brink.

let me start this off by saying I was very surprised by how much fun i had playing a tempest! this was my first beta weekend, and I came in a little worried about how much I would enjoy it. I gotta say, it was pretty darn fun! BUT there are a few things I took issue with, i’ll outline those in this post

TRAITS:
I still feel like the minor traits need something more. It feels very weird that we have a minor trait that introduces the overload mechanic and then the next two overloads complete the overload abilities. I feel like the swiftness and prot should be part of the base overload ability. the second two minors should be built around rewarding the ele for staying attuned to one element.
I felt like Gale song and Unstable conduit were very effective. I mostly used UC, because there’s not really many situations that call for group stunbreak in verdant brink. Latent stamina is way out of place, but y’all are working on that so I’m sure it will come out good.
The master tier needs a little work. Mainly because Harmonious conduit just feels required. That stability needs to be worked into the baseline overload mechanic, or into one of the minors (i know i said the minors shouldn’t only effect overloads, but I think that having hardy conduit give prot and stab would be strong enough to justify this.) i can’t imagine a situation where one would be better served by tempestuous aria or earthen proxy. That Stability needs to be baseline!
The grandmaster tier felt pretty nice! I mostly played with elemental bastion or imbued melodies, and i think they’re both very good traits. Lucid singularity needs a little work i think, something to make it more aggressive? right now all of the GM traits are more supportive, and I think there’s room for a little bit of offense in this tier.

Overloads
These were really fun! I do think the charge time is a little too high, if it was brought down to 3-4 seconds, this would be really nice. the water overload felt very weak. i was running full clerics and the heal values were just too low. especially considering the 5 second charge time. water overload needs to be much stronger to justify that wait time. also, it would be really nice if air overload would recharge from fresh air without having to switch to another attunement! it was my favorite overload by far, and a little change to the way it interacts with fresh air would make it perfect.

Warhorn
this weapon felt pretty nice. The fire skill 5 could use a little something extra. I think if the field expanded faster, and if there was a large burst of damage when the spell is first cast, it would be a really effective skill. the air skills felt pretty undertuned. I would like for cyclone to activate a little faster, and have a wider area of effect. Lightning orb needs a big damage boost, and some other type of utility.

Shouts
feel the burn feels really nice. eye of the storm needs a cooldown reduction, maybe 30-35 seconds. also, shocking aura! flash freeze is underwhelming. I think it needs to be instant cast, and do at least 5 seconds of chill. a damage boost would also be welcome. aftershock is a nice skill, but needs a cooldown reduction, i’d say about 35-40 seconds, as well as being instant cast. The shouts all need to be usable while we’re overloading, otherwise they feel clunky.

overall, i’m pleasantly surprised by how tempest is turning out, but I definitely think it needs these few changes if it’s going to really shine!

bumping this to get dev attention

any word on whether sand squall is still getting a magnetic aura?

For me, one of the biggest issues with tempest is still the traits, especially the minor traits. I’ve been thinking about ways to improve them for a while, and these are my ideas

first off, the current minor traits feel very stingy. The first minor introduces overloads, the next two complete the abilities of the overloads. it’s like if the first minor allowed us to overload fire and water, and the next two allow air and earth. it just feels wrong, like it’s one ability spread across three traits. the tempest seems to push eles to stay in an attunement for a longer time, so i think that should be the purpose of the minor traits.

Minor Trait 1: tempest gets access to warhorn, shouts and overloads, base overload functionality gives 1 stack of stability for four seconds (note that the protection and swiftness are gone!)

Minor Trait 2: this should be dedicated to rewarding you for staying in an element for a while, whether or not you overload. my idea is a stack attribute bonus for each second you stay attuned to an element. something like 10 power per second while in fire, 10 healing while in water, precision in air and toughness in earth. cap it at ten stacks, so if you stay in an attunement for 10 seconds, you’ll get a 100 point bonus to the associated element. numbers are just for example, could be higher or lower for balance

Minor trait 3: this could go a few ways. my first idea is some sort of weapon skill cooldown. a flat 20% reduction to all weapon skills would give tempest the ability to stay in 1 attunement without just sitting on auto attack. another ability could be to add bonus effects to our auras. something like, fire auras remove conditions, frost aura weakens enemies, shocking aura causes small bolts to shoot out at enemies, earth aura blocks 1 melee attack. i think either of these ideas would benefit tempest in different ways, with the aura improvement promoting the mid range support style.

Thoughts?

stunbreak on overload would be a really neat, thematically fitting addition
also, it’s been said many times before, but i think that having stability on a major trait is going to make it a “required” trait. this would be much better placed into the base overload mechanic. (swiftness and protection should be put into the base overload mechanic as well, those two minor traits feel so bad)

Hi, I know Robert Gee said that axe and scepter were being looked at for changes in an upcoming balance patch. Do we know when those changes will be implemented? A dev response would be greatly appreciated

we know that axe and scepter are being looked at right now. We don’t know what changes will be made, or how soon they’ll be implemented, but they are coming

these changes look great! I’m was already so excited to play reaper, and now it looks even better!
i am still wondering, when will we be seeing the scepter and axe changes?

Hi, I sent in a bug report a few weeks ago, but the issue hasn’t been fixed, so I’m beginning to think my report may have been lost. The issue is pretty simple, the tier 1 heavy sylvari cultural armor doesn’t display right. there is a little opening on the stomach, and while the chest armor displays correctly, the legs show a default skin pattern rather than my sylvari’s actual skin pattern. screenshots attached showing the skin pattern with the armor and without.

I’m guessing this is something to do with the beta testing, but my game keeps crashing and giving me a cd000005 error (something like that? i forgot to grab a screenshot).

I’m playing on a mac

you can only equip one elite specialization at a time

I want to buff elemental power, but I don’t want it to have the stun break. I think the stun break runs counter to the effect of the glyph (a stun break is used as a reaction during a fight, whereas the glyph itself is best used at the start of a fight to increase your condi output.) I think the resurrection glyph should be reworked to do something else that is more defensive. THAT is where the stun break should be.

also, I agree that inscription needs a lot of work. the strong boons that alekt suggests would be really nice. I also thought of maybe using the inscription trait to bring back the flavor of lingering elements. this would be complicated, so it’s little more than wishful thinking on my part. but something like if you use a glyph, you activate the glyph of your current element and the element you were in previously.

So, with the recent fix to minion AI, I’ve been a playing a MM Necro a lot lately (it’s so much fun!), and last night I decided to try playing with the glyphs of elemental summoning on my ele. I found it to be lots of fun, running around silverwastes with two fire elementals blasting every enemy i came across! However, it was a real bummer having the elementals bound to a 60 second life span, especially after playing with the necromancers minions. I was wondering, and hoping, that there might plans to remove the time limit on the elementals lives. Obviously, the active effects they have would need to be put on longer cooldowns, but I think it would be worth it to make elemental summoning builds more fun.

(on the subject of glyphs, does anyone know if the devs are looking at changes the effects of glyph of elemental power and the resurrection glyph? I think it would be great if they buffed elemental power, and changed the resurrection glyph into more of a person defensive skill. I think the stun break should be removed from elemental power and put on the other “new” skill replacing the resurrection one)

Khristophoros.7194:

Cecilia.5179:

I don’t think any of the shroud entry skills need an icd. It just limits our options. Besides, making the trait require the axe trait to be fully effective is simply terrible. Axe needs a total overhaul.

I agree. Everyone agrees except apparently the anet devs since they have been unresponsive to this issue.

Actually Robert Gee said he was going to be bringing some changes to axe and scepter soon. It’s on the bottom of the first page of the BWE changes post

you make a lot of really good points! i think i understand the point of sword a lot better now, thanks!

Oh yeah I know it’s not the only condi weapon. Sorry, i should have specified it’s the only melee one

you may well be totally right! it just seems to me that, since warrior has such strong power options from axe, greatsword, hammer, and mace, it’s odd that the only condi weapon is a more of a hybrid.

Another question for Robert Gee! Looking at how the berserker is shaping up to be a powerful condition spec, are there any plans in motion to improve the condition output on warriors main hand sword? Since it currently only gets bleeding on the burst and auto attack, with a big power damage hit on the 3, has the development team thought about changing the 3 skill to be more condition oriented? Perhaps giving it some bleed or torment stacks? It just seems to me, from an outside perspective, that warrior might benefit from sword having a more dedicated role as a condi weapon, rather than it’s current position as a more hybrid damage weapon.

Thanks! I’m personally really hoping y’all add torch to that trait, I think it’d be really fun. Keep up the good work!

Will the torch activate the Arms trait ‘Dual Wielding’? Or is that something that is only going to activate when you have a possible mainhand in your offhand? I’ve never really played warrior much but the berserker has really peaked my interest.

although having the symbol of protection on that skill 5 might be a little overboard. a block, group aegis, damage, and group protection is REALLY strong.

these changes would be great! the shield is so iconic for guardians, it’s so sad that our current skills are so lackluster.

Forgotten Legend.9281:

honestly, there’s enough aura traits as it is, having one in every single trait specialization. i’d rather see some damage multipliers and stability.

the reason I went with auras is because, since we have so many traits that affect them, it would be nice to see them become a better, more unique defensive asset to the elementalist. I do agree that tempest needs some more stability though, we are lacking there

I would for rangers to get stags and deer! i would definitely make a ranger if this were possible

So, first things first, I think the tempest is a pretty neat spec and I’m really excited to play it, but I think some of the traits are a little lacking, especially when compared to the other elite spec we’ve seen. Particularly the minor traits, since you have to use all three when you take tempest.

The main issue I have with the tempest minors is that they all build directly onto each other so they may as well be one trait. The first one give you access to overloads, and the next two give you swiftness and protection while overloading, so we may as well just roll the swiftness and protection into the base skill facts of overloads. The current traits really feel to me like tempest doesn’t have minor traits 2 and 3.

My proposition, and I encourage others to comment with their ideas, is to roll swiftness and protection into overloads automatically, and make the minor traits 2 and 3 effect other aspects of the base ele.

my idea for a grandmaster minor is a trait the adds additional effects to auras we apply, since the devs clearly want to push the use of aura builds. I think something like this would be really neat.

minor trait 3: fire auras you apply remove 1-2 conditions, frost auras you apply weaken foes that hit you, shocking aura pulses damage to foes at melee range, and magnetic auras you apply blocks incoming melee attacks (only 1 attack per aura)

this trait, i think, interacts well with the base elementalist, and promotes aura builds, which I actually think are very fun.

I’m not quite sure what I would want to do for the tempests minor trait 2, so if anyone else has ideas they’d like to share, please do!

I’m usually able to bring people down quickly with my staff build. Cleric amulet with runes of strength and sigils of force and energy. the patch will be bringing even more damage with the 150 power boost in fire, as well as pyromancer’s training and puissance (those are the traits i plan on taking, since i already use spell slinger).

the way i see it, staff ele works best in 2v2 or more situations, where you can stand off the point to support your team and hammer enemies with meteor shower

(speaking of meteor shower, how thrilled is everyone to be getting that skill on a 20s CD?)

that said, i do think it would be really nice for zerk staff to be viable

in pvp i’ll be speccing fire/water/arcane. this update is really buffing my build to be honest. pve will mostly be running fire/air/arcane, with zerk weapons and armor and sinister trinkets (not meta, but it’ll be fun)

Pyromancer’s Puissance might not be great for a power build, but I can see it being useful in a condi build, since the might would boost that. And if tempest gets sword, we may see a faster auto attack, which could may PP into a very powerful trait

yeah i’m curious about this too. they were supposed to change lightning hammer too, but didn’t say much. I’m still hoping for a bigger rework of conjures to make them fun and viable

honestly i’ve been running a staff build in pvp, and it’s worked very well for me, and it has received nothing but incredible buffs. I’m so thrilled to play with these changes.

(my build is a 2/0/0/6/6 clerics build, pretty good at 1v1 and sometimes 2v1, and absolutely excellent in 2v2 or more. it can hold a point very well)

Thanks! I feel like it needs something more, since they bumped it from adept to grandmaster.

I just can’t figure something out for the adept level. maybe something that inflicts weakness? I wouldn’t want it to just be another damage modifier. Also, my airomancer’s training trait should also get a 20% air skill reduction, i forgot to write that in. i’ll edit it in a moment.

interesting take on Air! If I’ve been thinking of what I would do for that line too, so I’ll share my ideas real quick

I think I would take a slightly different route for air’s boons line and make it more focused on support, and the vuln line you’ve given I would focus on vuln and crit chance

Minors

1. Swift Winds: Increase attack speed while attuned to air by 10-15%
2. Electric Discharge: Stay the same
3. Weak Spot: same, maybe increase vuln duration

Adept

1. Zephyr’s Boon: Stay the same (5 sec fury and swiftness when you apply an aura)
2. I’m actually not quite sure what i’d want here. maybe a ferocity increase, or increased damage against vulnerable foes. I wouldn’t go so far at to make it a 20% damage boost though
3. Furious Winds: fury when you disable a foe (just like you suggest)

Master

1. Vigorous Winds: When you apply swiftness to yourself or an ally, also apply vigor (5sec)
2. Airomancer’s Training: Increase crit chance by 10% against vulnerable foes and reduce recharge on air skills by 20%
3. Tempest Defense: keep it the same

grandmaster

1. Fresh Air: Recharge air attunement on crit. Gain superspeed for 2 seconds when you attune to air
2. Bolt to the Heart: increase damage by 20% and apply vuln to foes beneath the 33% health threshhold
3. Lightning Rod: keep the same

sorry for any typos, I typed this up really quick!

What I’m thinking of for the fire specialization is one set of traits focusing on direct damage, one focusing more on burning, and one focusing on support/survival. This will be an example of traits that I think would fit these themes. They may be way overpowered, but that’s fine, i’m not a game developer. Here we go

Minor traits

1. Power overwhelming: Increase Condition damage by 10% of your power while attuned to fire
2. Sunspot: When you attune to fire, burn your create a flame burst at your target foe’s location when you attune to fire, burning them for 4~ seconds (240 radius)
3. Burning rage: 10% increased damage against burning foes

(I think these minors fulfill the role of a damage line much better than the ones we currently have)

Adepts

1. Furious Blasts: Blasting a fire field applies fury (10s)
2. Burning Precision: Critical hits have 30%chance to burn, increase burn duration 30% (same as it is now)
3. Flame Barrier: 30% chance when hit to burn nearby foes (2sec, 180 radius). Signets grant fire auras

Master

1. Pyromancer’s Training: increase damage in fire by 10%, reduce cooldown of fire skills by 20%
2. Roaring Flames: burning damage is increased by 15%
3. Purifying Fire: burning retreat, flame wall, and ring of fire remove 1-2 conditions

Grandmaster

1. Pyromancer’s Puissance: skills in fire grant might. Applying fire aura grants 2 stacks of might.
2. Persisting Flames: Fire fields last 2 seconds longer and inflict an additional 2 seconds of burning. Burn duration increases by 30%
3. Blinding Ashes: Blind foes you burn (3sec cooldown) ((the cooldown is specific to each target, so you can blind on foe, and then blind another 1 second later, but can’t blind the same foe for 3 seconds))

Now, I know plenty of these are pretty darn powerful, so they’d certainly need to be scaled back (again, i’m no game developer, and this stuff would need to be balanced), but I think they would give the fire specialization some much needed direction. Traits like this would be much more fun than what we’ve got now

I agree, though I think scepter doesn’t need a stun, since it gets CC from focus or dagger.

But Absolutely, each spec needs 3 ‘lines’ that work thematically with the specs abilities (similar to how the reaper has 3 kind of themes with their traits)

I really like your idea for ferocious winds. I think having a three traits dealing with control, three with critical hits and precision/ferocity, and then three dealing with support would be really nice.

I also think the minors should be altered to give the specs more power. 10% movement speed is hardly noticeable. I think fire and air are the ones that need the most attention.

I’m going to post my ideas for a reworked fire spec when i get the time

I love the idea of having the conjure replace your attunement, I’ve seen it around a few times. And activating the utility could make the weapon available to allies.

Another idea that i’ve had, though it may be a little far fetched, is to make frost bow more focused on damage and control, through vuln and chill. obviously, lower the damage of 4, and maybe change 5 a little, but buff 123 to make them stronger. Then, they could create a “conjure water bow” that could be a healing skill. It could have wide access to water fields and condi cleanse, and would replace water attunement skills. I doubt they’ll do this though, it would probably take a lot of work.

What I’m really curious about though is what they’ll do with our profession mechanic. I’ve really liked the changes for mesmer, guardian, and necromancer, and I really hope they do something fun with ele.

yeah, it looks like the datamine skills are just placeholders. We can expect a full set of new skills with no repeats. It’s definitely not confirmed though.

(but it would be so coooool)

oh my gosh a revamp to scepter would mean the world to me. I also think the fire focus skills could use some touching up, more damage and/or burn time from fire wall and just… anything to make fire shield better. but those are changes that, if they come at all, probably won’t be part of the tempest.

I do hope the sword datamine was correct, i think we need a stronger main hand weapon. I hope, if it sword, all our auto-attacks are chains, like most swords get. I really hope the skills in water are strong. I know water is meant to be supportive, but it would be a nice change to see lots of chill vuln and damage from water.

as far as traits and profession mechanic changes, i really don’t know. It’s hard to think of ways they could change attunements without just directly buffing it, since it’s so core to the class.

yeah lingering elements is practically useless. Flame barrier and zephyr’s speed don’t provide anything meaningful, and the water t1 minor already lasts for several seconds out of water. the only thing i can imagine it being good for is keeping the toughness from earth.

also, the t3 minor in arcana is so weak. 10% on a crit to inflict tiny conditions. the arcana minors really need some work

Nice! yeah I think i’ve seen your post before. i agree that burning precision would also make a good adept, but I felt like power overwhelming was a little more versatile, since burning precision is only really effective if you have high crit chance. and I like the idea of the 20%CD reduction, but I feel like there’s a theme of the second minor trait causing an effect when you swap, and I wanted to keep that intact. But I think a lot of your trait ideas are really solid.

First off, I’ll talk about my views on the fire line.

What we have now feels very lackluster. For a spec that is supposed to be about heavy sustained damage and burning, our minor traits seem very misguided

Current/upcoming traits:

Flame Barrier: in it’s current form, it’s a 20% chance to inflict one second of burn an enemy if it hits you in melee, while the upcoming trait (which i know is not yet finalized) is a 20% chance to gain a fire shield when you swap to fire. Both of these are very weak, defensive, and seem to contradict what a fire attuned elementalist should be trying to do. Elementalists are so very squishy that having traits that Might hurt the enemy a tiny bit IF they hit you in melee seems counterintuitive. Most elementalists can’t tank through many direct hits in melee, so having these kinds of traits in fire magic seems counterintuitive

trait 2, sunspot: small aoe damage around the ele when you attune to fire. Again, this seems counterintuitive to what ele is all about. We have so far access to daggers which are 300-600 range, scepter which is 900 and staff which is 1200. it seems odd that we have two traits that require us to be in melee range to be effective (since sunspot damages in aoe and flame barrier burns melee attackers). Sunspots melee range means that it usually misses, and it’s low damage makes it pretty inconsequential.

trait 3, burning rage: 10% damage boost to burning foes. This trait is the only fire minor that makes sense with the theme of sustained damage and burning, and I think it should be the trait that the fire minors should lead up to.

My suggestions for the fire lines minor traits are to make it more focused on strong aoe burning effects:

Adept minor trait: I think flame barrier should be scrapped or moved to the major adept level, while power overwhelming should be updated and changed to the adept minor. I think the functionality should be something like you gain condition damage based equal to 10% of your power while attuned to fire. I think it’s justifiable to raise the % from 7 to 10 (maybe even a little higher??? pretty please) if the trait is active only while attuned to fire. This trait, I think, fits much better in a fire line focused on damage and burning than the current trait.

Master minor trait: I think this trait should take some inspiration from the air line master, which calls down a bolt of lightning on your foe when you attune to air. Rather than doing damage at your location when you attune to fire, I think sunspot should cause a few (2-4) seconds of burning on the area around your target when you attune. I think it should have a smaller radius than staff skill 3 and deal no direct damage. This trait would allow you to be useful regardless of the range you’re at.

Grandmaster adept: Keep it as it is. The 10% boost to burning foes would synergize perfectly with the other two suggested traits.

I think these new traits would give the fire line a much better sense of purpose as a heavy aoe damage dealer. If anyone has ideas to improve or maybe tone down my suggestions please comment! I’ll probably also talk a little bit about the major traits at some point, but for now I want to hear other people’s thoughts! Sorry if these posts are hard to follow, I do feel like i’m kinda rambling.

Hi! As the title says, this post is going to be about ele specializations and traits, particularly minor traits. I’m mostly going to talk about my thoughts on the fire line, and I welcome any ideas the community may have to improve the traits. I know there have been threads on this subject before, but I couldn’t find any that don’t seem kinda dead. If anyone has a link to an existing thread where this stuff should be, just drop me a link!

My hope is that this post will be seen and taken into consideration by the dev team. Okay, here we go.

So. The fire magic specialization. I think all the posts I’ve seen so far have shared the view that the fire line is… really disappointing. And one reason for this disappointment, at least in my view, is the minor traits. They don’t really fit a strong theme. Other professions have minor traits that interact with each other in interesting and powerful ways, so that each spec has some kind of theme.

For instance, the mesmer domination line has minor traits which cause interrupts to inflict vulnerability, daze to inflict vulnerability, and a boost to damage against vulnerable foes. Clearly, a focus on vulnerability and interruption.

Rangers skirmishing gives you swiftness on weapon swap, fury on weapon swap, and increased damage while flanking, a big focus here is mobility and unpredictability.

Warrior’s strength line gives damage at the end of a dodge roll, burst skills restore endurance, and you get a damage boost while your endurance is not full. This line lends itself to a play style with lots of dodging and movement.

Unfortunately, I think the ele is really left out for the most part when it comes to good minor traits. I think our only really nice line is water, with its aoe healing pulse, big heal on attune, and 25% increase in outgoing healing (though i think there should be a 10-15% boost to personal healing, to make this useful while solo). Earth is pretty good, but fire, air, and arcana just feel very aimless to me. I’ll go over why in my next post.