Guild Wars 2

By ’unconditional block’ I mean something like Shield Stance, which blocks all attacks for its duration.

They’ve always been powerful - allowing near-invulnerability while still contesting a point, since there are relatively few unblockable skills in the game. Heart of Thorns added many more, contributing significantly to the ridiculous powercreep that Elite Specs brought us.

They’re great in PvE, since they allow devs to design hard-and-fast-hitting mobs whose attacks you can block with your cool new skills.

They’re arguably fair in WvW, since they give folks a fighting chance against the spamfest that is zerg fighting. They can make smaller-scale fights frustrating and dull, but when you’ve got food and ascended stats and access to all the banned-in-PvP stats and runes... I don’t think this matters much.

In PvP, though? Ugh.

Several seconds of pretty much just free point contesting, during which time the caster’s other cooldowns are ticking away. They add little to nothing of interest - yes, a well-timed block is a powerful thing, but a three-second block barely requires any kind of timing to be effective. I don’t think blocks should be removed from play - they’re an important strategic element - but as things are, they just add to the sustain of many builds, particularly those with Elite Specialisations, and remove a lot of the action from fights. I could kind of deal with Engi’s Gear Shield (though not as part of the decap build...) but now it feels like every skirmish includes multiple several-second breathers while players pop their blocks.

There are three main changes I can think of, to reduce the effectiveness of unconditional blocks, that might be reasonable:

1) Add more unblockable skills and traits.
This one is a bit iffy, because it makes conditional blocks (e.g. Aegis or Arcane Shield) significantly weaker. It could be interesting to have a block-hate traitline or two, but it could also become a balance nightmare and be perpetually flipping between OP and useless.

2) Reduce the duration/increase the cooldown of unconditional block skills
Basically... nerf them without changing functionality. A change like this would make players have to think rather harder before popping a block skill, since it wouldn’t be able to nullify as many attacks, or may not be available to negate a bigger hit later.

3) Turn many into conditional blocks.
Obvious enough - only allow these skills to block a limited number of attacks, maybe giving a counterattack or heal effect if enough hits are absorbed. I’d like this best for sPvP, where there are only a limited number of spells in any one area, but of course this would make such skills rather less useful in large-scale WvW.

Are there any other potential solutions I’m missing? Am I in the minority for thinking that unconditional blocks are too widely available?

Play zerker staff, it’s the only way.

Any Warrior who pops Rampager and needs more than 15 seconds has bigger problems than this particular skill.

I was wondering what was up with Ferocious Winds, submitted a report a couple of days ago when I noticed it wasn’t updating properly. Looks like it’s fixed now, hello higher crit damage!

Xstein: you’re kind of ignoring the point.

Mesmer has been a stealth class since launch, it’s just not had *this much* stealth available in *this many builds*.

Nobody’s saying "make Mesmer unable to stealth". The point being made is "Mesmers can currently stealth *too much* and are *too strong* due to the trait that does this.

Right now Mesmers can do high damage, with CC, from far away, with relatively little counterplay. Stealth contributes to this significantly.

Not to mention that Mesmers’ stealth access literally just got buffed significantly - as chibbi says, the relevant trait got a buff *as well* as got made accessible to more builds.

To date it’s only been weapon skills - any auras you gain from other sources (like leap finishers and rune sets) were never shared in the past. (edit: haven’t tested Sunspot + Powerful Aura but I don’t believe you’re wrong when you say it doesn’t work)

I’m disappointed that they’ve not fixed this by now. The trait already has to compete with Cleansing Water, and the Sunspot + Powerful Aura combo takes up two of your trait lines. Elemental Attunement grants AoE swiftness *and* protection as regularly as you’ll be proccing Sunspot for Elemental Shielding or Zephyr’s Boon, to boot - and comes in a trait line with utility that the other lines still can’t really offer.

The only auramancy build I’ve ever actually been able to have any fun with doesn’t even use Powerful Aura - you can blast the ice field on Staff to grant a Frost Aura to nearby allies.

Skrytt.9478:

Experiencing the same issue in a tournament PvP game on Temple of the Silent Storm. All players from our match are currently trapped in a PvP game where score 500 was already reached by one team. Attempting to leave through any means seems to port us straight back into the match.

Also queue times are *insane* for the time of night - people are reporting 30 minutes or more in queue, for both ranked and unranked on EU. Usually right now queues are less than 5 minutes, sometimes up to 10.

ChoChoBo.6503:

Yes, revive a thread 3 months old! 3 months and this hasn’t been solved? Lols, was watching a few twitch streamers who got the stuck in match bug. I’m guessing its a new bug guys, not the same one that occurred 3 months ago

People were reporting this a couple of days ago, too - pretty sure there are much more recent threads that can be necro’d for it.

It’s been several months since the pick-your-map system rolled out. I’d really appreciate getting to see some numbers for map popularity – particularly for Skyhammer, Spirit Watch and Courtyard, which at least the vocal part of the community strongly dislike.

Also interesting would be seeing which maps full or partial premade teams tend to vote for, if it’s noticeably different from smaller groups and solo-queuers.

Justine.6351:

Iris Ng.9845:

I wonder if we can blast stealth under water with Murky Water

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tidal_Wave
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Detonate_
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Arcane_Wave

Iris Ng.9845:

Detonate propels you backward while Tidal Wave is like a mini Rush that can risk revealing. I was thinking of group stealth for the underwater skip in HotW. But it seems possible in a way.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Arcane_Brilliance

A group with a couple of Eles could stack a bit, with Brilliances and then a Detonate sending them in the intended direction.

Issue: accurately casting Murky Water without a target. Good luck.

Coulter.2315:

GrandmaFunk.3052:

What do you mean by this?

The Mesmer Greatsword auto attack channel deals the damage near the start of the channel so you can "stow weapon" to break the cast after the damage has landed and then immediately auto attack again. This makes the attack far more efficient as you ignore the rest of the animation where no damage happens (its like mini quickness for free).

Because graphics are fun, here’s a very rough example of the mesmer GS attack:

o = damage tick
- = non-damage tick

Regular cast:

o-o-o----o-o-o-----o-o-o----

Sheath-cancelled cast:

o-o-o/stow weapon/o-o-o/stow weapon/o-o-o

or rather:

o-o-o-/o-o-o-/o-o-o-

It’s a significant DPS increase to stow immediately after the third damage tick, rather than wait for the natural autoattack cycle to kick in after the skill’s aftercast.

Coulter’s explanation was great and all, I just wanted to add some o and - to the thread. Wheee.

As has been said: turret engi isn’t super great against an organised team – but the amount of skill required to succeed as one is far too low at all but the top tiers of sPvP.

One big problem: that heal. Ways to tweak the healing turret that might make engineers a bit less ridiculous:

- remove the blast finisher. It’s almost never used as a turret, instead used to drop-cast-blast as fast as possible. Without that blast, the burst heal from the turret is significantly reduced – any engineer wanting that heal would have to sacrifice another of their precious explosions, or make use of the slow effect of regeneration, or pick up their turret and wait for their heal to come off cooldown like everyone else does.

- increase the cooldown for all turrets that were destroyed/detonated. This would also serve to make turret builds a lot more vulnerable between enemy attacks – and any AI build should be significantly weakaned for a while when their AI is taken out.

Albaraa.1635:

Also maybe if the engineer is not in a certain radius of his turrets they stop attacking…

While this wouldn’t solve most turret engi problems, it would be very nice to see – if a turret engi goes off to assist their team as one point, they shouldn’t be able to keep up damage/CC pressure at their original one.

Maybe make all turrets become non-functional (including accelerant-packed trait) when the owner is >2000 range away. Maybe stop them from attacking targets when the engineer isn’t also within the turret’s active range (wheee, thumper turret gets less useful immediately).

Maybe just nerf all turrets in PvP and remove AI builds from play – they’re all far too effective at lower tiers, and often also appear higher up the ladder.

Don’t remove hotjoin rewards.

Slightly reduce win rewards, and make loss rewards equal to win rewards.

Suddenly, it’s far better to join matches immediately and play all the way through, than to camp in spectate and join the team that looks like it’ll win - since rewards are reduced for not playing for long enough in a match.

The reduction in win rewards devalues ’rank-farm’ servers a bit, and the removal of win/loss reward difference would hopefully fix one of hotjoin’s biggest problems - join the right team at the start, force autobalance if you picked wrong, enjoy your 4v5 if you failed at both of these.

With the sheer number of AI units that folks can spawn in PvP... yep, single-target procs suck pretty bad in most cases. While Elemental Contingency and Lightning Rod were eventually un-nerfed (I’d say ’buffed’, but they were both introduced as unusable skills - it felt like they’d been pre-nerfed before release!), Blinding Ashes still doesn’t work like a GM trait anywhere outside of a 1v1 no-AI duelling build.

Currently popular 1v1 Ele builds use either:
- 0/0/2/6/6 cele D/D wtf meta
- x/6/x/x/x Fresh Air, which I’ve never seen used well with 6 points in fire
- Staff, which either takes Persisting Flames for the DPS/point control, or heavy water/arcana investment for sustain/versatility

Sure, folks occasionally post builds that they enjoy playing that run with Blinding Ashes, but the trait’s still terribly underused and is pretty reliably outdone by the AoE fury and lasting fire fields that can be gained from Persisting Flames or heals/cleanses from investing in water and arcana.

Even if the internal cooldown was increased to 6 seconds (maybe 7?!), this skill would become so much more useful with a per-target cooldown. Right now, as Zuko says, far too many blinds are wasted as random procs on AI units.

SEE ALSO: Glyph of Elemental Power.

My keyboard has no space between the function keys and the number row - F1 is directly above 1, F4 is directly above 4. Not even anything particularly expensive - is a Bush KU-0833, I quite like the design already.

More buttons on a mouse also helps, but you don’t need a bunch - for a 7-button mouse, I have left+right click as standard, clicking mousewheel casts a utility skill, the back/forward thumb buttons doing another utility and dodge, and my elite/third utility mapped to Z and C. If you’ve not yet remapped your 67890 skills to be more reachable, I highly recommend doing so in some way that is comfortable for you!

Also if you’re struggling to reach the function keys to switch attunements, remap those (as folks above me have said). As well as the suggestions above, I know that some people like to use zxcv for their attunement switches - again, it’s a matter of personal preference and what you can get used to using comfortably.

Oh, one other thing - remap your capslock key. Capslock sucks anyway (do you ever actually use it in your day-to-day life?) and the left Alt key is in a pretty terrible place on most keyboards. Using a tool like keytweak* you can swap these keys (or others) and give another nice key within easy reach of your pinkie for most applications.

*I’m only linking to search because the original creator’s site appears to be gone - use your discretion and scan any new executables for viruses before running!

If anyone tells you that you’re not stacking enough might, drop a flame axe before you leave and tell them to do it themselves.

...okay, so it might work inconsistently in WvW? On my alt account and it’s showing targeting markers of the right size when traited.

This event chain can bug out very easily, and I don’t think anyone’s found a way to get her un-stuck yet. You’ve got two reasonable options:
- get lucky and find a taxi to a map where she isn’t stuck
- do her quest chain immediately after the next patch goes live, when she’ll have reset

The same goes for the majority of other quest chains that can stall... without any word about upcoming fixes for them we’ve just got to assume they’ll keep breaking forever.

Red Queen.7915:

cheese.4739:

I can read guild chat fine most of the time, and type to it, but new messages to guild chat don’t highlight the tab like other chats.

Same here. It works just fine, but the tab doesn’t flash anymore when there’s a new message. Deleting and recreating it doesn’t help, unchecking and checking the option again doesn’t do a thing, either.

It’s like the bug that already existed – if you stopped repping a guild (or left a party or squad) while there were still unread messages in the relevant tab, that tab would usually bug out and be permanently marked in red. The only way I ever found to fix it was to restart the whole client. As Red Queen describes, it wasn’t actually the tab that was broken, but rather the guild (or party or squad) chat – removing affected categories from a chat tab returned that tab to normal, but adding them back in or adding them to a new tab caused the perma-highlight to return.

I think I’ve also had the bug manifest in its current form, too – with the tab never getting highlighted to show activity in a certain channel – but I’m not 100% sure I’m remembering that correctly.

It was fixed in PvP a fair while ago, but for some reason is still broken in PvE/WvW - I’ve reported it as a bug at least once. Don’t usually find this to be a problem, but when trying to land stuns on stationary targets, or catch multiple allies within a water field, it gets a bit frustrating.
Pop to the Heart of the Mists, make sure your PvP build has the trait equipped, and you’ll see that you get the trait-adjusted targeting indicator accurately there!

moonstarmac: Blasting Staff increases the radius of all AoE rings on the staff weapon, which for most ground-targeted skills simply makes the AoE ring larger (Lava Font, Ice Spike, Healing Rain...).
In the case of Meteor Shower, though, it’s not just one big ground-targeted spell - the caster marks the area in which the center of any meteors can land, and the *meteors* are the AoEs buffed by the Blasting Staff trait. The white AoE indicator that shows up on the ground while a shower is in progress isn’t larger than the targeting indicator because of this bug - or at least, not *just* because of this bug - it’s also because the meteors landing right near the edge of the targeted area can apply their AoE damage as much as a whole meteor radius away.

The Meteor Shower targeting indicator is actually the only round ground-targeted AoE that’s *not* affected by the Blasting Staff bug - the shower radius doesn’t get increased by the trait, but each *individual meteor* has a larger splash area. Since the targeted area shows where the center of each meteor is allowed to land, increasing the radius of meteors’ splash will also increase the radius of the ’danger zone’ marked by the white ring during the shower.
I’m... not entirely sure if I’m happy with the targeted area being displayed the way it is, or if I’d prefer the indicator to be the same size as the entire ’danger zone’ during the shower. Best of both worlds would of course be a specialised range indicator, showing some disinction between the current ’meteors strike here’ marker and the entire potential AoE area (traited or not).

Anyway yeah, most of that wasn’t really relevant to OP’s bug - AoE ground targeting indicators are accurate in PvP even with Blasting Staff equipped, and I have no idea why they’re still wrong in PvE/WvW.

I can read guild chat fine most of the time, and type to it, but new messages to guild chat don’t highlight the tab like other chats.

....and again
/15characters

ArthurDent.9538:

There is actually a purpose you can get out of casting them, Procing signet of restoration. And I don’t really think the class needs hand holding of this type, just make sure you have a target and if the enemy drops target with stealth, then that is basically a dodge and they earned it.

Stealthing before your opponent starts their cast is not a dodge. Stealth does not grant immunity frames.

Dodging the cast as it finishes is good timing. A lucky stealth is just that – luck, not skill.

Conncept.7638:

Sorel.4870:

Not only was glyph of elemental recently buffed, but Fiery GS is and always has been amazing in WvW, so your statement is simply not true.

It isn’t great and never has been, what it is our only substitution for what we lost in the nerfs that were misfired at RTL instead of cantrips where they were actually needed. And it is still worthless in Zerg vs Zerg, what actually matters in WvW anyway. Furthermore, glyph of elementals wasn’t buffed, they gave us the ability to activate the skills the elementals already had, however the elementals still cannot attack while moving and move like molasses in the dead of winter, and are entirely worthless against any player. They are however, good for soaking up damage in PvE, if you can get anything to aggro on them.

Along this vein:

- FGS is still primarily used as a running/disengaging tool in WvW, rather than a weapon. It’s not at all useful for actual combat in the open arena that is WvW.

- Elementals got a ‘buff’ by allowing us to activate their active skills. This was done by turning them into some kind of short-duration pet similar to the old and useless Ranger pets: when the caster tries to use the active skill, it gets added to the end of the summon’s attack queue. This makes the activated abilities impossible to time accurately, so pretty useless in a PvP setting. At least they dropped the 1s cast time for the summons’ active abilities…?

The Elementalist class has a whole bunch of skills that target a foe and only hit this targeted enemy or the area around them. They fail and go on full cooldown if used without a target, completely wasting the cast.

A few examples:
- Lightning Surge (staff air #2)
- Lightning Strike (scepter air #2)
- Blinding Flash (scepter air #3)
- Signets of Earth/Fire/Water/Air (utility skills)
- Fiery Eruption (FGS #2)
- Grasping Earth (downed #3)
There may be others that I’ve missed on weapons, utilities or conjures.

Of these, there’s only one that an Ele might want to cast without a target – the stun-breaking Signet of Air. All the rest are rendered completely useless if the targeted foe goes into stealth just before the cast, or if the game makes the player lose target for any other reason.

Most Mesmer skills that summon clones and phantasms can’t be cast without a target, since most illusions will focus attacks on the enemy they were cast at. Why don’t all skills that can only hit a targeted foe work like this?

Note: I’m aware that there are other professions with skills that become useless without a target yet can still be cast – Necromancers have Ghastly Claws (axe #2) and Feast of Corruption (scepter #3), for example. Any fix to stop Elementalists wasting their cooldowns should of course also be applied to affected skills used by other classes.

The other maps are generally agreed to be unfit for competitive play, so they can’t be chosen in ranked during ladder seasons.

fracture.9754:

Yeah, I was considering this. Then I remembered arcane shield, obsidian flesh, sigil of energy, …

Anet pls, give us a smoke field and delete other professions.

Personal blocks, sure, but no party-wide ones. We need Persisting Flames to also say “every 2 seconds in a fire field, all allies gain stability and aegis”.

Aaaand there’s a crash again. Tried entering/leaving different parties just after the latest update, and didn’t crash, but that was just me getting lucky I guess.

fracture.9754:

Give them party stealth and reflects and you can remove all other classes from the game, as they’re not needed anymore (a bit of an exaggeration, but I’m trying to make a point here, kitten it!).

Would still need a Guardian to share blocks

I managed to load up fine and get into a PvP match straight after patching, but got a ’network error’ partway through the match (while still very definitely connected to teamspeak and hearing my allies struggle in a 4v5). After that crash, I’ve not been able to load up the client as far as the character select screen (though I can still log in on the splash window).

Uh-oh.

EDIT: I can log in fine on my NA account, at least for now. This presumably means it’s a problem with EU servers?

...and it’s worse.

...could this finally be fixed? Just joined and left a few different parties after patching and haven’t crashed. Will wait a day before I actually believe it.

It’s to do with level scaling - in PvE, your stats are capped as if all your gear was of ’level-appropriate’ rarity.

This reddit comment explains the basics of it - certain stats are ’wasted’ when in low-level areas, so you may wish to change up your gear or food choices accordingly.

One quite minor change that I think you’ll get significant benefit from involves swapping a couple of traits. Remove the trait point from the water line, and add it to arcana In the first arcana trait slot take Renewing Stamina (trait II) and in the third slot take Evasive Arcana (trait XI).

The effects from Evasive Arcana can be used once every 10 seconds, per attunement, and provide excellent utility - you can dodge into a foe while attuned to fire to do damage and apply some burning, or heal and remove a condition in an area while attuned to water, all while dodging enemy attacks. Renewing Stamina, particularly with gear that grants precision like berserker’s, gives very high uptime for the vigor boon and lets you dodge much more frequently.

From your post, it sounds like you could also improve your rotation through attunements - there’s no need to cast all skills before switching attunements, and with 6 points in arcana you’ll be able to swap pretty regularly (which grants those Elemental Attunement boons all the more frequently). All skills have some use in some situation, yes, but you’re much better saving them to combo together than just throwing whatever you have whenever it’s off cooldown!

EDIT: oh, and with your traits, too - you’ll benefit much more from taking Persisting Flames (Fire XI) instead of Pyromancer’s Puissance. The might from every fire skill sounds nice, but that’s... not really that much might, since you’ll usually be swapping between attunements regularly. Persisting Flames lets you get good uptime for the fury boon, so much more regular critical hits... and applies this boon to nearby allies, too!

I had a few times yesterday and today that I manged to leave parties without crashing, but just tried to /leave again and the game died.

tyu: it’s happened to me when I’ve joined a party and tried to leave immediately, so I’m pretty sure that time isn’t the main cause of the problem. Same goes for map changes - I’ve tested with folks on the same map, or different maps, both when forming the party or after it’s been around for a while.

The most likely change from the patch that did this is the vote-to-kick system, which also for some reason says that someone rejecting a join request has ’voted to kick’ a person who wasn’t even in the party yet. Can we not at least get a rollback to the old system, if there’s not a fix incoming very soon? The inconvenience and frustration that this is causing affects us lot far more than the occasional unfairly voted for kick does - and I’m sure the ban system is equipped to deal with people who regularly grief in that manner.

Bloodlust was king because you didn’t even need to waste a sigil slot on it - meta dungeon builds had a second weapon with the sigil to build up stacks, then swapped it out when at 25 stacks to get the benefit of another (force or night or whatever) without losing the stacks. ANet (finally) fixed the exploit, so now folks need to actually consider whether Bloodlust or other stacking sigils are more effective when designing builds rather than assume everyone will use them regardless.

Not having done any calculation on this myself, I can’t say which situations it’s better or worse in, though.

Dexlmentia.7391:

Is that to say arc lightning has a good niche use during the burn phase of Teq or fingers if conjured weapons are on cooldown?

No, no it is not. You can’t hit multiple points with Arc Lightning, particularly not while in the might-stacking banner-buffed blob, so it’s a serious dps loss compared to anything AoE.

Dexlmentia.7391:

Is camping fire in staff truly the highest dps an ele can do or are some builds with dagger main hand in lightning in any way comparable?

With someone blasting those fire fields, Staff is incredible dps, constantly ticking damage from both Lava Font and Fireball over an area. I don’t think there’s any other weaponset that has compararable dps when staying in one attunement, unless using conjures.

It’s single-target, or at least can’t reliably hit multiple targets. Scepter Air has great burst, sure - Fresh Air Scepter specs are unbeatable for putting damage on one target in a short period - but in PvE most of the time you’ll want AoE to take down multiple mobs at once. Air sucks at that.

Hynoris.3684:

reality:Raise the mov speed +40% and projectile absortion.

Oh aye, move speed would also be good. There’s a hard cap at +33% movement speed, but anything higher than that gives partial or full cancellation of chill/cripple – and the Engineer Super Speed and Ele One With Air are +100%, allowing maximum speed even while chilled, and Mist Form cancels out chill to allow movement at regular speed.

Straight-up immunity to movement-impairing conditions, and no speed buff, might actually be better, though. Immobilise completely shuts the Tornado down with no counter, and while some common immobilise skills are projectiles (like Pin Down and Net Shot) there are a fair number that aren’t.

I actually use Tornado as full zerk in PvP - with Lightning Rod it can spread damage and weakness while scattering a group, or be used as a quick burst in 1v1. It’s still very situational, and there’s almost never a good reason to stay in the transform for longer than 3 seconds.

The simplest way to change it, that would make it more practical, would be to add projectile absorption - then it could provide some team support by protecting allies inside, or close in on a pewpewpew Ranger without taking serious damage.

I’d also be up for seeing it changed to a fire-and-forget sort of skill, as has been suggested above - I doubt we’d get it as a Glyph with different attunement effects, but even an AoE effect that launched foes at intervals would make it worth casting much more frequently than it currently is. I’m thinking an 8 second duration, one launch every 2 seconds - along with one or two other effects like projectile absorption, damage ticks, blinds on foes, or cleanses on allies. Hell, make it a Smoke field and ruin stealth forever!

I’m serious about all of this but that last sentence, by the way. Eles being able to self-stealth, with the blast finishers available to us, would be really daft.

Two other threads about this problem:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Leaving-parties-crashes-game/
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Leave-Fractal-party-crash/

It only seems to affect a small number of players, but you’re definitely not alone here. Let’s hope a fix comes out soon.

It’s really not been fixed.

Parties from dungeons, fractals, pvp, wvw, open world. Parties I’ve been in for 20 seconds or 2 hours. Parties that I’ve done several matches with or moved between maps and instances with or just stayed on one map with. Parties that I’ve tried to /leave or been kicked from or been left alone in.

There’s been *one* time that I stopped being in a party, and didn’t immediately crash, since the patch.

This is really not okay. Can we at least get dev acknowledgement that you’re aware of this issue? I can’t participate in a huge amount of content without having to restart the client over and over again.

Just to let you know that this has been happening to me too, since patch.

/leave command, clicking party info > leave party, getting kicked, other members leaving... if in any way I go from being in a party to not being in a party, my client crashes.

So many bugs this patch, but none of the others have rendered the game unplayable.

Queensdale events end quickly enough that most of them don’t have time to scale up - the l80 player who first found it is done in twenty seconds and then it’s on cooldown.

Might be okay if you’ve got a character to map with, but as a daily to do... yeah, I’ll be skipping it if future map events dailies are anything like the first one was.

So the new daily for ‘do # events’ sucks.

Everyone’s piled into Queensdale, the events aren’t lasting very long, and mapchat is entirely “any events?” and “this is terrible, I can’t tag anything to get event credit”.

Wasn’t one of the reasons for champtrain nerf to stop starter maps’ chat from being full of this kind of spam? More importantly, aren’t events meant to actually give credit to those who take part?

At least make it region-based event farming, or something less… messy.

infantrydiv.1620:

instant time warp/plague form on me so I ran away.

The only thing to do in such a situation. Clearly.

Zuko.7132:

i should have said this earlier but im talking strictly pvp and while its not a terrible trait u cant make a good pvp build with it
[...]
if u go zerk staff and put 30 in fire and 30 in air ur survivability is a joke also most conjured weapons suck in pvp so no earth shield or lightning hammer

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAWnMISLD2zA+NAfEGIAwCHAuAJAxrgMQSsUdA-TJBFwACuAAl2foaZAAPAAA

This is what I’m currently running. While I’m *incredibly* squishy, I also deal hueg damage - and a lot of that can be burst, with combos like Ice Spike -> Static Field -> Gust landing very close together on a target.

The Signet is... excellent. I started using it a few weeks before the signet buffs were announced, for the 4s immob, at 1200 range, that wasn’t a projectile, on 30s cooldown; in the patch, it was also given covering bleeds, and had its cooldown reduced to 25s! Wheee!
It’s well worth interrupting a Meteor Shower cast, or pretty much anything else, to pop it on someone next to you just as you’re going down... I do very few stomps these days, but can beat most foes (particularly zerk ones) if I can get them stuck in my Tomb.

It still isn’t a 1v1 build - due to the lack of cleanse, heavy condi is likely to be a death sentence, and most skilled Mesmers and Thieves can stealth/port enough to waste my cooldowns while staying at range - but if I have to, I can take them on with at least a fighting chance. Static Field is an incredible skill to cast on self, followed by Lava Fonts and immobilises to take out that pesky Thief (or often Medi Guard). Don’t forget that Frozen Ground is an unblockable, wide-area chill! Can hold folks at range or in an AoE, and of course will help a lot when you inevitably need to make a tactical retreat from one of the (admittedly many) situations that it’s necessary.

Team fights, though? Wheee! Traditional off-point nuking is still an option, making use of terrain for cover and trying to throw the few support ablities I have at on-point allies... but if my team has a proper bunker in there (for heals/support/ressing), and there are no enemy Warriors who have Endure Pain off CD,* dropping AoE on the point and getting into the action is far more effective. And fun!

If I was to swap anything out for a conjure, it would probably be Arcane Wave - while it’s great to have the instant AoE crit + blast finisher, there’s no question of losing the stunbreak/blocks from Arcane Shield (or possibly a different stunbreak, like Armour of Earth for its stability), and I really don’t want to drop the control given by Signet of Earth. Will maybe try out the Bow or Shield this evening!

Still not quite sure about sigils... while Fire+Air is great for burst, it might well be better to swap Fire out for Strength:
- decrease in burst (and AoE) damage output
- increase in might stacks (with +55% might duration, the stacks gained from Strength are significant!)
- higher might uptime/guarantee to have might when downed (since I can’t combo while downed and boonstrips are relatively common)
This last point is the main one: the #6 bonus on Strength runes give +5% damage while the user has might, and their #4 bonus isn’t guaranteed to keep it up - particularly if a foe is stomping or healing or targeting someone else, instead of hitting me. I just don’t know if the sustained dps increase from Sigil of Strength is likely to be as effective as the extra burst that Sigil of Fire gives - any thoughts?
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*I still feel that Endure Pain and Signet of Stone, being complete spike negation skills that don’t stop the user from attacking and moving, shouldn’t contest points - right now there is *no* downside to using them on a point. While Warrior has been given appropriate, much-needed nerfs recently, it’s still far too easy for a zerk War to contest a point while still dishing out crazy AoE damage and taking none themselves.

robertul.3679:

The even dumber thing?
Dishonor for rerolling to another class? ANET ARE YOU kittenED?

I’m very much in favour of encouraging people to play as the class they queue as:

1) It lets us have profession-specific MMR. It’s frustrating to try out a new profession in PvP and get stomped repeatedly because you got matched against players who had much more experience with their own classes – and ruin your account-wide MMR and leaderboard position at the same time. With free rerolls, you can’t have profession-specific MMR without a high risk of exploitation.

2) It stops the game from becoming Reroll Wars 2. You’re meant to run a decent teamcomp that will be able to take on other teamcomps, not specifically build to counter exactly who you’re up against. If matchmaking is trying not to put multiple repeated professions into the same team, one of the only reasons for rerolling that I’m currently okay with will be gone – folks queueing solo shouldn’t end up with multiple Thieves on their teams, for example.

Diva.1476:

An Elite should be something that could be used in emergencies as a saviour in most of the situations. We rely so much on our boons and considering our class lacks a good elite, here is something I have come up with.

I would suggest for a “Cantrip” based Elite skill may be a Cantrip Signet with a CD of 90 secs having..

Passive Effect: Improved boon duration (even by a little 10% would be nice)
Active Effect: Gain Quickness, Might, Fury, Regen for 8 secs OR Instantly recharge all attunements

Also, Cantrip water traits would gell well so nicely with this elite. Let me know what you guys think

As for the rework on the existing elite skills, Tornado could have some hard hitting AOE skills more longer duration.

Ignoring that you’ve stuck signet effects on a ‘Cantrip’, there’s no way we’re going to get a Cantrip elite – the skill type is relied on by so many setups already, and has such great trait support, that giving us another one as an (effective) elite would run the risk of making Ele OP. Particularly as D/D Cele 0/0/2/6/6 is still very much effective in the meta.

As a Signet, though, it could work – a popular passive suggested for an elite Signet is to reduce attunement cooldowns by one (maaaybe two) seconds, with the active instantly recharging all attunements.
If the passive were to be boon duration, it should probably be more than 10% – the Mesmer Signet of Midnight grants 10%, is a stunbreak/blind, and sucks as a utility (though they do have less access to boons of any reasonable duration). Maybe 25%?

Chaith.8256:

*Shrug, sure tweak it how you want. I can’t even play Staff Ele competently, don’t look at me, haha.

It’s playing Ele in the downed state. The Grandmaster is not for blasting fury, the Grandmaster is for having long duration Lava Fonts, but more importantly, long duration Lava Tombs.

Yeah see um… I’ve been running something like this for a fair while now, and definitely enjoy it.

You keep your might and fury (and other boons) when you get downed, so I kinda prefer to blast my fields regularly – and also why Runes of Strength are effective, since they significantly increase might duration.
Zerk Staff Ele survivability is low enough that I don’t really see the point in running ER, with its long-channel heal+cleanse, when Brilliance will provide burst healing if fighting on a point (which is the whole point, when running Lava Tomb) as well as might+fury, or a little extra AoE heal, or whatever other combo effect your current field gives you.

Before Lightning Rod was made useful, I put those 2 points into either Earth (for Stone Splinters, which is nice with the tomb) or Arcana (usually for Arcane Mastery – while boons are great, and almost any build with 4+ Arcana should take Elemental Attunement, I really felt that quicker access to Brilliance/Wave/Shield is better for what I was running at the time).
Lightning Rod is now far better than either of those, I feel – not only does it grant damage (and weakness) whenever using CC, the Air GM Minor trait gives some added vulnerability, and the trait line has lovely crit-related stat increases too. Wheeeee.

I ran Soothing Wave with my Diamond Skin build a while back - was 0/0/6/2/6 with Arcane Mastery and (as with every 6-arcana build) EA+EA. This was... about the only time I might bother with it, since I had no cantrips.

It’s useless in PvE (since most foes have a very low crit rate) and one cleanse plus 4s of regen every 10s in PvP is pretty insignificant compared to the on-demand cantrip cleanses - along with their primary effects - coming up more regularly.