Showing Posts For gandlethorpe.2641:
This would encourage people to use elementalist utilities that aren’t cantrips, so the ANet balance team won’t do it.
I mean, there must be a reason why they deliberately got rid of Fire’s Embrace.
Shatterstone isn’t worth casting, ever.
I like using it versus world bosses if there aren’t enough people stacking vulnerability. I figure the +4% damage over ~20 seconds from 10~30 people beats the damage I can do alone in other attunements.
While playing around with Vapor Blade, I noticed that sometimes I was able to stack way more vulnerability than usual, sometimes even up to 25. It seems to happen only if you hit multiple mobs that are very close to each other. You can test this out in Heart of the Mists on the clusters of golems, or in regular PvE by stacking mobs.
My theory is that the vulnerability is applied in a small AoE rather than just on the target that gets hit. In any case, this could be an interesting, albeit situational trick in PvE.
First and foremost, to be remotely usable, conjures need to be less cumbersome. Picking up and dropping has to go, and so does the inability to access the skills instantly. At the same time, just making them act like kits isn’t a good solution. Conjures are definitely stronger than average weapon skills since their buffs, so they need to be more limited than kits.
My solution for conjures would work like a combination of kits, mantras, and the current mechanic:
*Semi-permanent and freely swappable, like kits
*Need to be prepared on a long cast time, like mantras
*Keep the charge mechanic to maintain balance
Conjures would basically be a secondary weapon that you summoned after a lengthy cast time. Once conjured, that weapon remains with you until you summon a different conjure (or, if FGS, lasts 60 seconds). Unlike regular swaps, the cooldown would be 1 second, like engineer kits. The charge mechanic would serve as a way of limiting their use, and would recover at a certain rate. Maybe 1 charge every 4 seconds, which could be improved to 2 seconds with the Conjurer trait. The Conjurer trait would no longer increase charges to 25, except for the ground-summoned weapon, which does not recover charges.
This remake would fix the main problem with conjures, being their cumbersome mechanics and limited ability to combo with other elementalist skills. It would be internally balanced by charges. Finally, it would make them a very interesting and unique mechanic, distinct from engineer kits.
There is a lot of great content in the game that is ignored because of the pitiful reward compared to other content that is arguably of lesser quality. A big example is jumping puzzles, many of which are extremely well-done and enjoyable. However, after the first time, there is not much reason to do them again, since the rewards don’t match up with the effort required to do them. It’s disheartening to spend a lot of time and effort making precision jumps, then seeing people in a starting zone making way more gold than you by repeatedly killing low level champions.
It would be great if there were something to encourage people to do less popular content, similar to daily achievements but more focused and requiring a bit more time investment. These “Daily Challenges” would offer players more engaging alternatives to grindy, repetitive content (like champion trains) with competitive rewards. For example:
- Complete every jumping puzzle
- Kill 60 unique champions
- Visit every zone without waypointing
Upon completion, players should be able to choose from different rewards, like flat gold, X amount of Y material, karma, gear, or even gem store items. Of course, rewards are ultimately up to ANet, but they should ideally be worth the time and effort of completing a challenge.
Anyway, just a rough concept of how to get people to do more of the content and explore the zones that are vastly underappreciated.
It’s almost unusable underwater because it’s still ground targeted, hah.
In before “lol underwater balance”
Thank you for taking the time to write this up. This is probably the first “elementalist rework” I’ve ever read from someone who really understands both what the elementalist is and what it needs. I’ve always resented the dependence of water and arcana, as well as ANet’s neglect of the other lines, and the unviability of focusing on a certain element. The supposed “master of adaptability” is so far from the case, and makes engineers laugh.
I really hope the balance team reads some of these ideas and takes them to hear.
Ele traits are probably the saddest in the entire game. We only have about 5 really good ones that you see in 90% of serious builds. Everything else is either situational, mediocre, or has a completely negligible effect.
Every time I see how many “+5/10% damage while X” traits there are versus the interesting traits that other professions get, I cry inside.
You are far too generous on some of your scores. You gave the 5 point fire trait and its sister trait scores of 2, yet you said yourself that “One with Fire” is useless (a correct assumption).
Nope: http://i.imgur.com/ZilZOfb.jpg
Even if it could stack 25 imba stacks of might, what could you do with it versus a zerg? Do some OP single target damage with your scepter or rush in with your daggers?
No, this change was mostly inconsequential, and likely made by a dev who doesn’t understand or play elementalist. Probably the same person who designed the 5-point fire trait, who seems to think elementalist should be getting hit a lot.
(edited by gandlethorpe.2641)
On the subject of Fire Shield + Obsidian Flesh: You have to actually get hit by an attack and take damage to gain the might. So yeah, nope.
Considering how many unusable traits we have, probably not.
Because people realized the other weapons aren’t worth using. D/D is popular by default of being the least bad weapon set.
The ele is almost the same as it was when you left, with a few nerfs to the 5 usable traits, and (gasp!) some underwater fields/finishers.
Eles can “manage”, but so can every profession. We have a lot of useful base skills, and are welcome on a team by virtue of having lots of fields and AoE. Unfortunately, what you can do at level 80 is little different from what you can do at level 30 (or even 20, since our elites are mostly fluff). We have an appalling selection of traits, with many being so inconsequential it has to be a joke. Only a few do anything to affect playstyle.
I don’t know when you left, but if everyone back then used D/D, cantrips, and only put heavy points into Water and Arcana, nothing has changed except that those are a little bit weaker. Still no reason to use glyphs or conjures in any serious build, or signets (apart from a convoluted aura spamming gimmick). Still no reason to use scepter or focus. Still no reason to use staff when circumstances don’t force you into long range.
While I think the new daily system is a step in the right direction, I don’t think it will accomplish what many players and ANet would like to see; that is, more traffic in lesser populated zones. GW1 had a great daily system that helped bring attention to certain areas of the game that would normally be ignored. Each day, quests were offered to clear a certain zone, complete a certain mission, and kill a certain boss. For that day, those zones and missions saw much more traffic, and if the boss was from a dungeon, that dungeon did too.
The dailies right now are still more of the same stuff that you typically accomplish through regular play. I’d like to see a system that encourages people to see more of the world. Taking a page from GW1, I think it would be great to have a “Zone of the Day” or “Zones of the Day”, where a certain zone or zones would be featured for 24 hours. It would not have to tie into the daily achievement system, but it could. Here’s how it would work:
- Each day, at the same time dailies reset, the daily window will list the featured zone or zones of the day.
- Featured zones will have increased rewards. For example, mobs could give double coin, exp, and have a higher chance to drop better loot; events could give double coin, exp, and karma. The rate that events occur could possibly by increased to handle the higher traffic.
- To be encourage players even more, waypoints in that zone could be free for the day! Another possible perk could be to uplevel any lower level character while in that zone.
For ANet, a lot of their work won’t be going to waste due to players not experiencing a majority of the world they’ve created. For players, they can look forward to logging in and seeing which zones they can expect to see packed with players!