Guild Wars 2

Pensadora.9478:

Please no. If anything, please lower the map caps to lessen the lag and discourage humongous, thoughtless , ktraining, scourgeous scurrilous blobs posing as combative groups.

Fixed that for you.

My overall impression is it’s a positive change, but it certainly needs some tweaks in terms of additional no-fly zones: Citadel to either of the northern towers makes the two already arguably most defensible towers nigh impossible to flip with even the most token force of defenders on it. A small no-fly border around Citadel would fix the issue though – It’s the unbroken flight from the height of Citadel that creates the problem.

There are certainly a few border adjustments to be made, but they’re far from game-breaking imo.

In the initial video, we had multiple members lagging on BG as well (my screen was a slideshow – can’t show video cause my recording software went caput :/). The video on EBG though, we decidedly weren’t lagging on our end. I have a recording of that night I can send if anyone from Anet needs it for data purposes.

So, as a fairly prominent BG person (the elephant in the room), here’s my two cents. I don’t speak for everyone on my server, as a note, just myself. This is something that’s been brought up/debated cross server, and I’m not against it actually… If a new system is put into place, which is should be, servers should be nuked. But if servers are nuked then the same system is put in place? The same exact system will be formed again in 6 mos. to a year.

If you nuke servers without systemic change, you effectively force-implode all the servers. We don’t have experience with mass implosions, but we certainly have experience with individual imploding servers (SoR, YB-ish, TC, DB have all had their implosions).

What happens when we see a server implode?
1) Guilds distribute to other servers.
2) Guilds that were friends with eachother/share membership filter to the same servers together.
3) Of the servers those guilds distribute between, one starts to become more and more popular.
4) The popular server starts winning more.
5) Guildless people start going to the popular server.
6) A new bandwagon shakes out.

It might take a couple of months… But without systemic changes like Luffi proposed or the Battlegroup system that’s been leaked in the past, we’ll be right back to where we started: Different server names but the same problems we’ve had since the beginning of the game. It needs to be both. You can’t fix one without addressing the other. Otherwise you’ll just be adding another bandaid over a gaping wound exactly like relinks… Not a horrible idea, but not a fix either.

Ours does! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqfUi9DzBuo

Yay for Friday!

So, already put a bit of a thing together authenticating Slack signups based on the members API (I’m very very lucky to have Liss in my guild ). Please tell me if you are able to break this so I can fix it: http://gw2mathhammer.com/slack.html

I almost feel guilty asking for a feature request cause everything’s so awesome but…

Is there any chance we could have the upgrades list the vendors they come from? I’ve got guild-aggregated list from a few people (http://gw2mathhammer.com/js/aetherium/upgradedata.js), but I would love to be able to pull from the API instead of crowd-sourcing guildies. Categories/vendors make it a bit unmanageable though.

Just adding my 2c after commanding the new maps the first time on Monday.

1. There are certainly more choke points. There are also plenty of places for open field fights if people choose to use them… I’ve seen more people run in the opposite direction though lately than I’d care to. I’ve also been honestly disappointed the last week in enemy commander’s use of those choke points: ie. acting like being on a new map means that basic strategy doesn’t exist. A choke is a choke. Only a stupid commander runs a smaller force up a staircase in full view with a larger enemy force at the top… People are completely ignoring other, better options to take the dumb route. Hopefully that will change in time as people know the map better. But Jesus people: Use some situational awareness.

2. I see your point, but it’s overall ameliorated by the new mechanics once you start to work with them. Shrine buffs/portals and sentries make it fairly simple to know enemy movements in advance of them going to the next objective and catch up to them. Also, auto upgrades/fortifications and tougher lords mean that you have plenty of time to catch up.

On reset, for example, when we were getting effectively double teamed on home garri, we got a scout call that one group had made it to inner and the gate was at 50… In the past, that call would’ve been far too late. We were on the other side of the map, there would’ve been no chance to get back in time. We ported spawn and by the time we got there, the gate was down, but the lord was still at 80% hp. The natural defenses of the keep meant we could prep our attack and take them by surprise pretty effectively.

3. Essentially auto-upgrades and huge keeps changes the nature of scouting. Your job isn’t just to sit there watching a gate and refreshing siege… You really need to be actively running around, flipping shrines and watching for red dots. We’d been struggling to maintain “sit in the keep” scouts in our guild anyways, instead relying on the knowledge of the guild roamers to help defend.

Personally, I think defensive siege outside of the actual lord’s room in keeps will pretty much be gone in favor of disablers/situational defensive siege. Home towers, with their new waypoints, I see being sieged to the teeth. We’ll see though. Honestly, we’re still learning siege spots.

4. There is a whole ton of potential that I just described above that, well, people are simply not using right now. In prime time NA on BG at least, the enemy commanders just haven’t been playing that I’ve seen – We’ve fought HGBQ and a pretty ragtag force of OnS/TW, but, honestly, they weren’t at full fighting numbers or concentration. Selfishly, I’m hoping that’s just cause people are grinding out their PvE (my guild certainly is). If it were just the new maps, then EBG would theoretically be a hub for fights, but that is NOT the case right now.

I’ll just wait for people to get their PvE ground out I guess, then get back to normal kittening about “this or that commander being a jerk” or “tc hides in their acs, we never do that!” or a home bl scout complaining that the commander didn’t respond to their supply camp in time. And if not, I guess we’ll see you in arenas.

First they didn’t allow me to use a flame ram in tonic form, and I said nothing — Because I did not need to ram as a ram.

Then they made my shiny new outfit placed my name and commander tag at my feet, and still I said nothing — Because I could toggle it off.

Then they denied me princess-doll hearts — And there were no rp-ers left to speak for me.

No more. No more shall I kow-tow to Anet’s Tyrianny!

I call upon my fellow tonic-lovers to boycott afk tagging up in LA until this is fixed! Who’s with me?!

As a member of a guild that does both private AND public raids, you get different things from both.

Private raids give you a clean environment to work on improving as a group: I firmly believe all training should be done in a private untagged raid. That’s not an insult to people outside the guild or their personal skill. You can’t see how your group performs until you put in a vacuum. You will never know if you’re being carried by numbers over skill until you can get a definite count on what you have. You also can’t hold members individually responsible until you can see what specifically they’re doing. For many people in WvW, having fun, tough fights IS the endgame. You simply don’t get that when the playing field is uneven, so you try to limit yourself to get it.

Conversely, public raids are fun. You can be more laid back. You can get to know people on your server outside of your little bubble. You get more willing scouts and better wxp. You help your server score PPT, which can be another fun game.

Both styles have their advantages and disadvantages and people tend to prefer one or the other for different reasons. Those people can and should work together. Part of that, however, is to have reasonable expectations and effective communication. If you see a fighting guild on the map and your t3 Garri is being challenged, send them a nice whisper asking to help out.

But keep expectations in line: If they’re fighting another guild at the time, then you are intruding on their enjoyment and they may or may not come. If it’s a close match, talk to them afterwards and ask them to please be more mindful in the future. If it’s not a close match: Save your anger for a time when it actually matters. I’ve been in the position of doing training on a Weds night on a non-push week when we’re 50k ahead – When someone PMed me about saving a keep in a map I wasn’t on when I was in the middle of a fight, I can’t tell you how little of a flying kitten I gave. Furthermore, that training makes us better fighters so that when matches are close and it matters, you have people with the skill to fight back.

RIP Ridculy 2013 Never forget!

I can only really comment on commanders in my own guild [KnT], tbh, but Kimchi Life and Boinggg have really come into their own as commanders as of late. Outside of my own guild, Crusik and Molasses have both really upped their game during some pretty tough hours of the day to be commanding. Pugmanding is a science of its own and they both manage to do it very well.

From other servers, I don’t know the names of commanders, but I am continually impressed with fights against NS. CERN handles a map blob well, which I know can be difficult to do. SF has the worst eles.

Special mention goes to Cloud Fly for managing to fight on both JQ and BG at the same time. Selfishly, it’s so nice to know that when TPA’s commanding, I no longer have to be a veilbot cause they already know where we are. Cloud Fly: Making mesmers lives better.

Temp curtain swiftness doesn’t stack… It hasn’t since beta. People their were running back and forth over curtains to get tons and tons of swiftness, so Anet in their infinite wisdom fixed it by making it not stack.

It’s a real shame if it’s intended… This nerfed some very viable and interesting builds and lessens the potential for some really interesting new builds (mantra/distortion commander build anyone?). It absolutely should’ve been in the patch notes with some sort of explanation. This is a HUGE change for anyone who had run mantras before.

We’ve been covering EBG since Season 2 started, so we spend a whole bunch of time in queue, lol. We’ve even started a guild-wide lotto based on randomly selected queue numbers to pass the time.

Yep, my guildies have pretty consistently had issues where the queue reports a different number than it actually is… Randomly jumping down to #1, then getting a bugged queue pop when you click to travel that places them back in the end of the queue. Anecdotally, it seems to be happening more to people who travel out of the map they queued in. Of course, that could be a coincidence. Also, EotM seems to report a different queue number in general than what your actual queue is…. Most people who’s numbers ticked down rapidly in EotM find their queues back up to a what the normal paced number would be when they log into a normal map unless they queued from EotM in the first place.

Aha! I’ve been a bit remiss in reading those matchup threads cause they can get a bit, erm, stupid. More stupid than they used to be on the forums. :/ Anyhoo. I’ll keep an eye out on where you guys are and join in.

I was just reminiscing with some friends about yak parades with TC back in the days when it was TC/BG/Kain in t2 for weeks on end. I was just curious… What happened to them? Or are they happening and I’m just missing them?

While I agree with some that suggest that the problem seems to be an issue of numbers more than anything, I think having stronger NPCs with mechanics within the keeps would/do make the fights more interesting while adding to the defensive capabilities of the keep. They’re experimenting with it in EotM right now, and I personally find that aspect incredibly fun… Nothing more hilarious than seeing someone get knocked off the flying ship at the equivalent of a ‘supply camp.’ That being said: You can have a keep with fully upgraded doors/walls, kitten NPCs, and a dungeon boss like lord, but if you have only two people to defend it and no bigger force to back it up, that keep is going to be flipped. At that point, it’s an issue of server size. And though I imagine some lower tier servers may disagree, the game mode is simply not built for small group play. There’s only so far you can go if you don’t have a larger force behind you.

sminkiottone.6972:

It doesn’t require skill to interrupt autoattacks lol, and as long as those runes are not in sPvP it means they are broken.

Ohhh. Good to know. Give me a sec while I delete my traveler’s runes, foodstuffs, boon duration runes, ascended gear, base armour stats and varied trinket stats. Since sPvP is the standard for balance in WvW, I’m certain that if I get rid of these I certainly won’t be able to run a PU build on my mesmer and kill people 1v1. I mean, I’ve never heard of people running that build in sPvP.

On the main topic: It seems to be that ‘not fun’ builds for the OP have been redefined as ‘not fun’ (and vaguely overpowered?) roaming specific builds that the OP has heard a vague collective of people complain about on Teamspeak and/or party and guild chat. Following this same logic, we should probably just stop playing whenever we encounter an aspect of the game that ‘people’ complain about constantly.

SO.

No more WvW in general because PPT is a flawed system that everyone hates. No more sPvP because it isn’t as good as GvGs were in GW1. No more fractals because they’re boring. No more champ farming because it’s just a boring mindless zerg. No more rangers, necros, or thieves because they’re worthless in dungeons. No more guards and warriors because they make dungeons too fast and easy. No more eles because they just ‘spam whatever skill isn’t off cd in their attunement.’ No more mesmers because they just stand back and let their phantasms/clones do all the damage. No more engis because nobody knows how to play them. No more gem store because it’s too expensive.

No more Guild Wars 2 because the developers are all a bunch of kittens who don’t know how to play the game and don’t care about the players. No more other MMOs because the trinity is an awful imbalanced system. No more games in general because the developers never care about their players or ever fix the kitten ed bugs.

In fact, I think we all agree that the only shining lights in gaming are the games that are so long gone that you can’t play them anymore (DAOC) and the games that have yet to be released (ESO). I’m certain nobody will every complain about the new games that come out. I’m also certain that if they rereleased those old school games, people would just FLOCK to play outdated, grindy systems.

Granted, you didn’t go this far. (Obviously.) But deciding balance and ‘fun’ based on what you and others enjoy complaining about will never work because PEOPLE LOVE TO COMPLAIN. In the end, the only attitude you can change is your own.

This argument might hold some water if there was some quantifiable calculation of “fun” fights. Unfortunately, those fights that you find boring might be incredibly entertaining to other people. I know that I’ve had some really fun fights with pretty much every build you mentioned. Moreover, they are probably a blast to the players on the other side of the duel. So whose definition of fun is more valid?

That being said, if you want to leave a fight before it even starts because it might not be as fun as you’d like: Go right ahead. Most likely one less person complaining in map chat about builds they personally don’t like to fight. I can only hope that the map is queued.

I’m not suggesting doing zoom hacks, cause that’s pretty kitten ed kittenty exploiting, IMO. Most trebs I’ve encountered can be ACed down. They could’ve been placed poorly. I don’t really care. I was just mentioning it as an option to consider for countering before going to alternatives.

Or build an AC to take the treb down. Generally pretty effective against door trebs.

Open world – Vaguely power based DPS with greatsword. I don’t really think too hard about it. :/

PVE Dungeons – Phantasm/Reflect

WvW Zerg – Support/Mantra/Glamour

WvW Roaming – PU Condition

sPVP – Depends on the mood?

RIPculy 2013.

He will always be in the public channel of our hearts.

I’d agree that this is incredibly annoying. But. It’s kind of a symptom of the fact that queues are borked right now. I’d rather that be fixed than anything.

That being said, most annoyed I’ve been on reset was when someone dropped their Sanctum event cutscene thing on the EB portal RIGHT when the scores reset. We were lucky enough to get a commander in, but he was with like 5 guildies because the rest of us had to exit the cutscene than attempt to find the 5cm of space that weren’t occupied by clickable items, lol.

Treborlavok.3504:

BUT, the biggest kicker here… Is does SoR want to try to knock JQ out of 2nd by teaming up with TC during week 6 and then with BG week 7 giving BG 1st, SoR 2nd and a tie with JQ/TC for 3rd… That would be interesting to see pan out. I think if BG wins this week that that’s a real possibility.

That’s extremely unlikely given the history of SoR and TC. While SoR as a whole probably aren’t huge fans of JQ, they spent the past three weeks being stomped by BG. At best they would be neutral in the final match. I highly doubt however that they would do anything that could remotely be seen as assisting BG in getting first.

TC, on the other hand, has fairly consistently not played that sort of game. They go after objectives heedless of map politics… If another team helps them acquire that objective, they will gladly accept the assistance, but by no means does that imply loyalty for the rest of the match. Heck, it doesn’t even imply loyalty for the rest of the tick.

So. The first two possibilities are the most likely. Despite some misgivings about a certain SoS guild that shall remain nameless, this week has been filled with tough and interesting fights b/t JQ and BG. I’m having a ball this week and look forward to the final week as well!

I kind of like the XP share idea. Not too much, but, you know, something for the time you spend in a tower. Course, I still do it just b/c I know how important it is, but… It’s awfully hard to find a replacement sometimes because of the lack of reward. I can certainly see how monitoring this would be difficult though… I don’t think anyone wants a repeat of the old zerg yak escorts.

tluv.5821:

I look at SoR/BG/Mag thread. Then I see our’s. They already have over 700 posts of complaining. Almost all of this is chivalrous manner. I love it. Why can’t every match-up thread be like this?

Actually, with Mag in the mix, I honestly expected a much longer thread for queue-time entertainment. Sadly, it’s gotten rather civil the last few pages. Really looking forward to next week’s fight against JQ! (And this weeks PVE on TC, b/c you guys have much more fun in your events. )

Fair enough! I will try to assist your endeavor.

… Yes. I think you misunderstood my post. It’s a very slight advantage in the sense that it’s something you have that the other server doesn’t have. BUT. It’s a useful advantage for overall balance. Which is why I said I thought it was a really good idea, lol.

I actually really like this idea. It gives a bit of help, but not an advantage that couldn’t be overcome. After all, even paused siege can be destroyed.

Liquid.9672:

Caffynated.5713:

Kiff.8157:

What do you think make us a T1 server?

Having a metric fugton of dudes.

Hey now! We have a lot of chics too.

We prefer the term ‘dudette’ tyvm.

Visiroth.5914:

dagneyandleo.6378:

The original complaint was that sup rams are so quick and powerful that they can’t be countered. As an above poster replied, one person with two ticks of treb mastery and a supply trap can stop those rams from being built and quickly kill them if they are. The response to that was that non-blob servers don’t have coverage. My response was that if you don’t have enough coverage to put one person in one tower to counter the rams long enough for the rest of the map to come and help, then superior rams with ram mastery are not the issue.

The guy you replied to wasn’t replying to the treb guy, but I’ll respond because you raise a valid point.

I think the idea here is that with low population you’re often forced to make a choice between continuing to sentry or do something else. This could be defending an objective being attacked, running supply to repair, running supply to build siege. Maybe said objective they were sentrying was breached, and now they are trying to rebuild a treb and they don’t have build mastery. What if there’s no supply in the depot, by the time you run supply that gate could be at 50%.

1) I realize that. Should’ve made that clear in the reply. My apologies.

2) Fair enough, but I’d argue in that type of a population disparity, the quality of the rams would make very little difference. Siege can only hold off a zerg until you can get support… It can’t negate the need for support all together.

The nice thing about the way that Anet has built the masteries is that they allow for progression but the progression can be countered by progression in other areas. So treb mastery counters ram mastery. Repair mastery counters build mastery. Etc Etc Etc.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that the player manning the treb has mastery. There’s also no guarantee that numbers on each side will be even. There’s no guarantee that the organization of the players on either side will be even. There’s certainly no guarantee that skill level of players on either side will be even.

Balance in WvW isn’t making things equal. Honestly, that would be incredibly boring. Balance is giving players the opportunity, with planning and support from their team, to counter other players. I would agree that sometimes numbers imbalance prevents you taking the opportunities available, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. TC, for example, has far fewer numbers in terms of coverage than BG or SoR, but their EBG third manages to be bloody impenetrable when we try to take it. The major imbalance in WvW right now is simply coverage: With equal coverage, superior rams with ram mastery are more than balanced. Fixing a symptom like superior rams won’t cure the innate issue.

Of course, having said that, I have no clue how to fix the innate issue. Especially since I, admittedly, love gigantic fights between massive amounts of players utilizing siege to the best of their abilities. But I’ve been the one lonely scout getting smashed by those player before, so I sympathize with that issue as well. I wish ANET the best of luck with that one, lol.

Since blind still only blocks the next attack, the duration is less of an issue. Honestly, I never really understood why immobilize was a condition in the first place. Conceptually, I think it should be a control effect. But I suppose they didn’t ask me my opinion. :/

The original complaint was that sup rams are so quick and powerful that they can’t be countered. As an above poster replied, one person with two ticks of treb mastery and a supply trap can stop those rams from being built and quickly kill them if they are. The response to that was that non-blob servers don’t have coverage. My response was that if you don’t have enough coverage to put one person in one tower to counter the rams long enough for the rest of the map to come and help, then superior rams with ram mastery are not the issue.

Also, save up your gold for travelers runes when you hit 80 (I’m addicted to them myself.) In the meantime, bug me to run around with you!

Ditto others re: power for PVE. Especially since Mesmer can be a bit of a pain to level through the middle levels. I’d really recommend playing around with suboptimal PVE weapons/utilities so that you get a better sense of the flexibility of the Mesmer playstyle.

Also: Transfer to Blackgate so that I can watch your butt being handed to you in WvW.

If you have neither population nor coverage in off peak times, then it doesn’t really matter if there are superior rams, normal rams, or one bored warrior with a melee weapon: that door going down. Heck, you can have counter siege and that door will still go down if you have no one to man it. Even t1 ‘blob’ servers lose objectives when they’re not scouted.

That rock also comes in handy for other purposes. Like say, for instance, you want to hold an impromptu dance party in kodan tonics with dolyak backup singers. That rock is the ideal spot for such shenanigans.

(Serious Note: There are two other exits from spawn. No one gets spawned unless those are camped too. Most of the time people allow themselves to get camped b/c the only enemies they can find are the ones camping them. After all, a fight where you’re at a disadvantage is better than no fight at all.)

ballymun.3986:

Hexin.5603:

Thank you, we’d welcome more friends to play along side with any hours of the day. And may our hammers clash once more before reset

I <3 TCthursdays, bring your drinks, empower, cap a tower, bottom’s up, next

Honestly, a lot of players on BG have enormous respect for TC server for continually putting up fights and never giving up. Some of our own commanders have been spending a lot of time guesting on your server for PVE purposes and enjoying your community there a lot.
Actually if I remember right, one of our commanders accidentally tagged up under a TC RP guild last night he’d joined and had to explain himself (to great amusement) as to who and what exactly was ERP ?

We would love to see your server expand it’s coverage, it’s always enjoyable to fight your groups, even if they are rather large and outnumber us many times

Mmmmhmm. ‘Accidentally.’ Sure. He accidentally filled out an extensive application. Sure.

Fun times on EBG today! SoR: You guys always bring really good fights. TC: You guys are seriously the masters of the supply drain.

For the record, SoR, I was the nutso mesmer who suicided on your ACs. Then your guild catas. That’s what happens when you hole a mesmer up in a castle with only clones for company.

At the risk of feeding the troll, um, if anybody wants to have Mez transfer to their server, I will totally donate some gold to that endeavor.

Crimedawg.8954:

Oh dear god imagine the tears if SoR won this week.

“SoR ruined the game !!!!”
“SoR started this !!!”
“SoR is stacked!!!”
“SoR took my lunch money!”

goes and checks wallet

Phew. Lunch money’s safe for now.

Fun times on BGBL tonight! Some really fun fights (oddly enough, defending North Camp was one of my favs… I outright giggled when you sent a yak in as a scout). Total props to TC for one of the first fights of the night at Hills… The universal ‘WTF’ when you flipped inner right under our noses was hilarious. Also to [NOPE]: Thanks for being a royal pain in the butt all night. It kept us on our toes. I’ve been looking forward to seeing you guys again ever since the TC/Kain/x t2 matchup threads back in the day. Please continue keeping things challenging and fun!

My Doly went over the mountain
My Doly went past the sentry
My Doly went into that green keep…
Please bring back my Doly to me.

((Note to self: Don’t post while slap happy.))

I want TC to come up to t1 for entirely selfish reasons: I have really fond memories of TC/BG/Kain threads back in the day. Also, the Yak Parade is amazing.

Good fun tonight! I spent most of my time guarding north camp and it’s yaks on BGBL in between panicked running to our swiss cheese Garrison and attempting to at least patch inner gates up. A couple times I was absolutely certain we would lose it. Total props to SoR and JQ for pulling out the stops and giving us some really good fights. Every time I saw a [Hel] tag coming towards north camp, for instance, a little part inside went ‘kitten. Well that’s 10s down the drain.’

JQ and SoR both fought tactically and smartly. As long as there’s 3 servers involved, there will be 2v1s: intentionally or not. It doesn’t really matter. Some times you can use it to your advantage. Some times they’re turned against you. There’s no sense complaining about it because two days from now it’ll change, so you might as well just figure out how to deal with it now and keep fighting.

BlackBeard.2873:

Proposals for fixing RtL so that we don’t go back to previous problems, but can fix the current problems:
1Fix. RtL goes a shorter distance on a shorter cooldown, no penalty for miss. Say 900 range on 18s cooldown. This means the bunker can go 1500 range every 18 seconds with RtL + burning speed, so it may be too much mobility
2Fix. RtL is affected by chills/cripples. Eles will still be strong, but need to be more mindful before popping RtL.
3Fix. Add a grandmaster trait that fixes RtL. The best suggestions seems to make Aeromancer’s alacrity reduce air skills differently depending on their weapon set.
4Fix. Reduce RtL cooldown to 30/15 or give it 1500 range.

I personally think that a combination of 1Fix and 2Fix are the optimal solution, as it makes RtL a reasonable offensive weapon, it gives dps ele a better way to escape (every 15s traited), it avoids 1-button escapes, and still allows the ele to be caught if he is conditioned properly (he still has cleanses like crazy, he just has to be smart now).

If you have additional suggestions for the list, please let me know so I can edit this post.

Good points. Fix2 in particular is a great idea… That would mitigate many of the issues with the skill. In general, I think we’d all agree that if targeted/untargeted separation is going to exist, it should reliably work. Which it doesn’t. In zergs, sometimes it doesn’t work due to skill lag, but let’s face it: None of our skills work due to skill lag in that situation. Makes for some funny fights though, when you can run through a ball of 100 and not get hit.

You’re right that in a similar situation, a skilled other class in DPS spec would’ve wiped that group. Eles have a long way to go to get to balance/parity in terms of DPS… RtL decreased cool down wouldn’t have changed that. The point of the video was to show the mobility that is still available.

I’d still argue that the cd needs to be longer for bunker builds. Even the base heal change wouldn’t really fix that (though it would go a long way towards doing so)… Not all bunker builds stack healing power. But you guys are right: the cd shouldn’t be split for DPS builds.

So, trait proposal revamp: Aeromancer’s Alacrity reduces cooldown AND treats every RtL as a targetted RtL. I added One with Air in the first place precisely because it sucks balls… It shouldn’t be a trait on it’s own. I thought of proposing targeted RtL passive as the 25 trait, but I think passive traits should effect all weaponsets since you can’t swap them situationally without a retrait.

40s cd in general IS too high, even for bunker builds. But 12s was ridiculously low for the range and power of the skill. 25-30s would be a good mid-point reduction.

Again, I apologize for the arrogance earlier. I’m just trying to find a different solution. We’re not going to get the old skill back, but, given the direction the trait changes have gone thus far, I don’t think it’s a bad idea to bandy back and forth alternative solutions to the inherent mobility issue. Does anyone have any other ideas?

I agree that there should be a way to increase mobility for DPS builds with a reliable disengage. I just don’t think the old RtL is the way to do that, since it favored bunker builds so heavily. You should not have that kind of mobility without some type of risk. If that cd was restored, it should be tied to a build type: Perhaps another component should be added to Aeromancer’s Alacrity to make it a more viable fix. Maybe combine it with One with Air? That would greatly increase mobility in dps builds, without similarly buffing bunkers.

In reply to your second post: I apologize for the condescension… The constant complaints about this particular nerf have been annoying me, as have the people complaining the class is broken. I could have written my original post in a less condescending, more thorough manner. Also, I am no master of sPVP. Far from it. Nor do I think it’s the only sign of a good player: I used it as an example of reaction in the form of varied builds and playstyles rather than the qq that permeates replies to PvE/WvW build threads.

I agree it’s not a worthwhile trait. Nobody uses if for a reason: the cooldown on RtL is comparatively minor in the long run. If a reduced cooldown was so incredibly important to people, they would spec for it and use ambient creatures to their advantage: 32 is bigger than 12, but 16 is much closer to 12 than 20 (or 32 or 40 if you don’t use your terrain). If the old RtL was the only thing that could make eles viable, people would jump to get even a bit of their old cd back. But they don’t, because it turns out there are other things in the eles arsenal that are more important.

I’m not saying there aren’t things about the Ele that need to be tweaked/worked on/fixed. Focus, for instance, really needs some love. The Fire trait line is still pretty much worthless. Our elite skills are not elite (though my character is a norn, so… stealth for the laughs!) Recent changes suggest that they are at least slowly attempting to buff other lines while nerfing the traditional bunker build: the two new 30 Air traits, for instance, are both very powerful when used properly. If you want survivability, Earth is also much more powerful.

Yes, mobility was nerfed. For me, the Zephyr’s Boon nerf was a much bigger deal because I was in an auramancer build. (Side note: I’ve tried playing with signets for another auramancer build, but speccing 20 into fire for it feels like wasting 15 points that are better spent elsewhere. Even though auras, on the whole, have been buffed.) Objectively, RtL is an incredibly powerful skill that should require some thought: In a fight, you should have to choose between escaping and closing the gap. If you’re solo scouting, you should be in danger. You should have to fight to keep going if you run across someone. If you’re outnumbered 5 to 1, you should have to plan your attacks to be able to get away. I realize that some other classes don’t have to do this: They should be, and in some cases have been, nerfed too.

The other side to the Daphoenix example is the inexperienced, incompetent d/d ele a few months ago who could still escape when he was outplayed and outnumbered. In the meantime, Daphoenix is still coming up with viable, fun builds (see: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-Mastering-the-D-D-ele-5-12-12/page/16#post2363720). Even with nerfs, between RtL, Lightning Flash, Mist Form (sort of… I’d argue this was a MUCH bigger nerf than RtL), fire 3, and even Fiery Greatsword, you can STILL get away. Heck, this is Daphoenix post-nerf: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGhPRMbmdA0. Skilled players can still wreak havoc post nerf.

There are legitimate issues with the class to debate/discuss/complain. RtL is not one of them. Furthermore, the class is still viable. You can run staff and s/d nowadays without being looked at like you’re crazy. All the hyperbole about the class being unplayable on these forums is frankly ridiculous: One build was nerfed. Other builds were buffed. That build is still viable in some situations. I make no comments about my own skill level: I’m probably just as much of a nub as you think I am. But if the class were ‘broken,’ the other eles I run with wouldn’t be able to do the incredible things they do with the skills they have available. I am still learning about new strategies and abilities we have and the situations you can use them in: Our class has so much that you can play with and try out. Relegating it to one skill or even one build is ridiculous.