Guild Wars 2

PopeUrban.2578:

You’re basically asking them to invest additional effort to give people reasons NOT to pay them for their work. That’s just dumb.

Or you just dumb down the trait system, introduce powercreept traitlines and lock them behind a paywall whilst watching your playerbase dwindle because of nonexistant balance.

ANet just straight up lied when it comes to Elite specs, even the biggest whiteknights can’t deny that elite specs are vastly superior to core builds, which is yet again just another result of their lazyness. There could’ve been a thousand other ways to make people buy HoT, but they rather chose the low effort route and powercreept the kitten out of the Elite specs and thats it – here’s your only incentive (as a PvP player) to buy HoT or to stay a second class customer.

As for me, ANet finally lost all their credibility with this move and for this very reason I haven’t bought HoT and probably won’t unless I can snatch it for 10 bucks or so. How am I supposed to trust a company that is not only unable to balance their game (even pre-HoT), but also blatently lies to their customers. Never in my life have I seen that an expansion did more harm to a game than it did good. They destroyed their own game with this expansion and only now started realizing it and fixing things.

Even after 8 months the game is still suffering from glaring balancing issues (especially core vs HoT builds) and instead of fixing them, they rather focus on another expansion just to snatch off some more money. At this point I rather stay a second class customer than support the greed and inability of this company, so it really boils down to an ideological decision rather than a financial. It’s up to ANet to earn my trust again.

/rant

Yeah, most important and entertaining GW2 streamer decides to not stream anymore, totally not a big deal. Once Leeto decides to quit aswell you can go and enjoy your boring and monotonous family friendly streamers.

This is exactly whats wrong with this community:, casualness and a non competitive mindset.

Swagger.1459:

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Do you realize that you’re basically describing Blade and Soul PvP? If thats what you want for GW2 PvP go and play BnS instead of GW2. GW2 being conquest PvP is totally fine despite what people may say. The game isn’t balanced around 1v1, it never was and never will. With that being said all it needs is a shift in ANets philosophy back towards its roots, because after all GW2 used to be a good game, they just continue to make bad decisions for PvP instead of listening to their players.

The game already lost its charme in late 2k14 with an increasing power creep and has been dead since the trait overhaul in June. Being able to choose from 3 full traitlines was the worst thing that happened to this game. It not only lead to an ongoing power creep, but also removed a lot of weaknesses for each class, which initally made this game fun to play and kept build diversity more or less alive.

ANet desperately tries to push for Esports, but Esports can only evolve through a solid foundation, which has never been the case for GW2 since PvP had been neglected for almost 3 years. Whats even worse is that despite ANet trashing 400k into PvP, nobody really cares about GW2. From what I’ve heard Pro League barely managed to get 3k viewers on a weekly basis. Congratulations ANet, that was some well spend money. Leave the Esports Part for BnS that atleast has a healthy frame and finally go back to your 2k13 – 2k14 philosophy.

The game completly shifted away from its original design and is now plagued by tons of passive procs, bad trait design, kittenty balance, Elite Specs and overloaded weapon skills. At this point it is no more than a spamfest that has little, if any, to do with skill. It’s sad how disconnected ANet is from it’s players and how they managed to ruin a great game. Well done lads.

Love it how OP intentionally uses berserker amulet and a build no thief would ever play in a serious environment to support his claim that thief is ‘so OP’ now, you the man.

With that being said, neither dagger nor staff needed any damage boost, but noone should ever complain about the sword fix, sword was literally unplayable pre-patch because of these terrible long aftercasts.

Yashuoa.9527:

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Yeah, thankfully the meta will change and I’m pretty sure thief will be a part of it, regardless of whether mesmer gets nerfed or not.

You can always voice your concerns about certain features or classes being too strong, thats what the forums are for, but if you take a look at HOW OP presents the issue without reflecting the other side of the coin, it is obvious that you’ll get answers like mine.

So to summarize:

1) Basilisk Venom competes with Impact strike, which will probably still be 1st pick. It’s more damage more utility and more useful useful, espceially now that quickness rezzes are gone.

2) Thief hits like a wet noodle at the moment, because it didn’t profit as much from the trait overhaul in June as other classes did. Our sustained damage is also non-existant pretty much like Shatter Mesmer.

3) Sword has insane aftercasts on autoattack and Flanking Strike, which pretty much renders S/D and S/P useless, so it’s rather obvious ANet would fix them if they wanted to buff their damage (aftercasts will be reduced, damage coefficients remain the same).

4) Acro has completly been destroyed in June and has been utterly trash for months. Even with the buffs I don’t see it coming back, as S/D has historically been the only ever weaponset to use it, a weaponset that will still suffer from Flanking Strike being bugged/laggy.

5) Staff AA and Dagger AA don’t need any buff, so this is the only valid point you may whine about, but given that we don’t even know how bunkery the new meta will be theres no reason to kittening witchhunt thieves again given that we’re the second worst class atm.

Yashuoa.9527:

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They’re only buffing autoattacks so what the hell are you on about? Last time that thief was good at 1v1 is also well over 1 1/2 years ago and making claims of thief becoming OP without even having seen the full patch notes or testing stuff is completly out of place given the current situation of thieves.

Personally I don’t think that Dagger AA or Staff (hell no) needed a buff, but what definitely needed a fix was Sword aftercasts and an overhaul of Acrobatics, which is exactly what they’re doing.

Your whole argumentation just screams hypocrisy, “nobody likes being insta killed or killed from stealth” are no valid arguments. Thieves can only 1shot pure glasscanons and the last time a class could actually 1shot people from stealth was mesmers, not thieves.

Those people who are whining about thief possibly becoming a 1v1 monster just show their lack of knowledge about the PvP meta.

Every time thief buffs are announced people go ham and whine their kittening kitten off in here. Thief never really had issues with mesmers to begin with and now OP wants to make us believe that it’s BV which will push Thief over the edge?

In reality whether you play with BV or not is completly irrelevant, cause you should be able to win against Mes anyway. BV is far more useful against Revenant, Guard and Scrapper than it is against Mesmers. It’s also only 2 attacks, not even a timeframe of unblockable attacks so this is clearly just another whine topic.

Thief isn’t half as bad as people say it is. Once Revenant drops out of meta or even just gets nerfed I’m sure that Thief will see its comeback.

With that being said I think that something needs to be done with Sword itself and especially S/D. The autoattack of sword has insane aftercast and the whole weaponset feels laggy since the trait overhaul. Infiltrators return still has a 1s cast time despite what the tooltip may say and Flanking strike/larcenous strike has lackluster damage and feels like you’re rubberbanding. I dunno what they kittened up in that patch, but it doesnt feel the same ever since then.

Also the discrepancy in damage between Vault and Backstab is absolutely ridiculous given that vault needs very little setup in comparison to BS.

Oh yeah and please delete acrobatics traitline alltogether, it needs to be redone with every single trait because you were too lazy to do a proper Elite spec and rather gave us Acro 2.0

This might be unrelated but, is there a necro skill that can pull downed allies? I’ve been randomly pulled or teleported to mostly allied necros while in downstate without doing anything myself.

Had a mes on my team that was also seemingly pulled/teleported to an allied necro although having already used downstate decoy. I thought it was weird but then again I don’t know kitten about necros.

Where is SoloQ? If you really cared about representing a players skill level then leagues / pip gain would be soloQ only. You do nothing about Premades being able to farm pugs and the general imbalances of matchmaking in terms of class stacking and team composition.

It’s absoultely hypocritical to claim that these leagues represent any kind of skill level when you’re able to team up and climb higher than your actual skill level. Hell the amount of bad players in Diamond and Legendary is ridiculous. 50% of them probably wouldn’t make it out of Emerald or Saphirre when they had to soloQ.

Solo quing should be rewarded with no pip loss at 300 points or at least shouldn’t be punished like it is now. Theres absolutely ZERO incentive to play solo, unless your a masochist like I am. As long as this issue isn’t adressed the leagues will remain trash and just a grind fest.

Please kittening read this post for once.

The whole system is trash, you’re either on a winning streak or a losing streak with maybe the exception of 4 50:50 matches in between. I was 3pips away from Diamond and went on a kittening losing streak now its 12 and 90% of these matches weren’t winnable at all given my teammates. The system is garbage.

Daredevil is obviously better than vanilla thief, so if anyone makes it to legend full soloq vanilla then I’ll give him props, but acting as if thief legend with duo to triple ques is something extraordinary or an achievement just screams attention kitten.

And in regards to Fat Disgrace: Too many thieves are also kitten players, Daredevil D/P and even Vanilla D/P SA are fairly decent and enough to climb divisions, so if you’re still massively struggling its because you either dont know thief’s role in PvP or you’re just bad.

So gratz on being legend, but don’t act as if its anything special given the circumstances.

So, whats your point exactly? Nobody ever said it was impossible to reach legend with thief, especially not with a 2- 4 man party and playing Daredevil. Need some attention again?

The only one to blame is ANet for their trash system. PvE scrubs eventually made it to ruby by grouping up and now you’re being matched up with players that probably wouldn’t even make it out of Emerald.

Im stuck soloq ruby t4 aswell, cause I constantly get pve scrubs after winning 1 or 2 matches, it’s annoying as kitten.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Helseth is banned from these forums for a reason. That reason is that he is an online troll and bully. Some of the comments he has made about specific devs in the past make it even more hilarious that those same devs would ever listen to what he has to say. One time on twitch or youtube some of the things he said about karl and roy should of earned him a perma ban from all things gw2. Surprised anet never had the integrity to shut down such toxic members of the community

Careful what you wish for. You’d probably be the first person I’d ban if we’re solely talking about toxicity and constructivism. Nothing but relentless whining and complaining about classes other than necro.

People either love him or hate him, but Helseth actually knows what he’s talking about and unlike a majority of the pro players he actually cares enough about the game to speak up and point out the obvious flaws. If you’re upset over some banter and trash talk you either have to be a kid or have some serious self-esteem issues. I think most of the pvp players enjoy his impersonisation, whether its real or not.

Collero should post his. You may not like him, but he’s basically always solo queing and not a complete random. Should give you an idea how far solo quing gets you. On EU that is.

choovanski.5462:

it’s a team game. 5v5. form a team. it’s really not hard at all.

Thats no excuse for not having a solo Q. It was already in the game, the majority of players wants it back and its far and beyond fairer to those that don’t want to team up 24/7. Heck, it’s not even difficult to implement and with ANet’s claim of PvP being the fastest growing aspect of this game there really is no reason to not implement it.

Don’t kitten your pants just because youse a scrub that benefits from farming pugs with full premade, hypocrite.

Quadox.7834:

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Only a scrub would say things like “class x is their favourite”, do you honestly think they’ll read their posts any further or give any value to it?

I simply don’t like your whole argumentation on thief balance, as it just screams hypocrisy. Thief already had issues since 2k14, but those were still overshined by the superior mobility and stealth which basically kept them in meta. You can acknowledge that or not, denying it won’t make it any more untrue though.

Thief weaknesses didn’t come out of nowhere, they’ve had problems with sustained builds before HoT, they’ve had problems with condi overload before HoT and they’ve been squishy before HoT, the only thing that kept them viable was mobility and stealth, so how can one possibly claim that thief wasn’t struggling before, just because they were meta, it doesn’t mean that they had no problems.

Those that still believe that Thief is viable can just watch Helseth’s TCG – 55HP analysis or ask him if he’d ever play with a thief comp atm.

Quadox.7834:

I predict that mesmer will be unviable
I predict that thief will get into the meta
I predict that warrior will get into the meta.

Oh look, all of these will come true.

Hard

Whats your point….? If you got nothing to contribute please stay away from this topic and rather keep practicing Mesmer on the Duel Server, it’s not like you know anything about Thief balance anyway.

yolo swaggins.2570:

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I mostly agree with what you said in this thread, but it’s pointless to argue with people that obviously have never played Thief in PvP and therefore resort themselves to arguments like “thief has always been meta or it’s ability to decap/+1ing” without realizing the actual problem.

The main difference between warrior’s and thief’s current state in PvP though is that warriors have fallen short rather unexpectedly, whilst thieves had been vocal about the increasing problems with thief balance and role in PvP since mid 2014. There were tons of posts that highlighted the problems of thief balance and the strong focus on mere +1ing and decapping. These topics were constantly flooded by whine and flame of other classes, because thief apparantly seemed “fine” or even “OP” to them.

The concerns got bigger with the June Patch this year and an increasing power creep as thieves were more and more pushed into defensive specs (D/P SA), which may have been strong, but even this spec couldn’t mask the increasing struggles of thieves. The class has been a +1 and decap bot pretty much since the introduction of Panic Strike D/P build by shad in early 2014, thats why they asked for buffs to survivability and/or 1v1 capability, as HoT already indicated a not so bright future for stealth, which had been the only defense mechanic for thieves at this point.

Fast forward to now, the thief class has finally reached the point that many of us had warned people of. The continuous forum whine denied necessary buffs to thief’s defensive mechanics and 1v1 capability and pretty much renders them useless for the current meta as they just straight out die to AOE and power creep.

As predicted thief has fallen out of the meta, which is quite ironical considering that we’ve foreshadowed our own destiny without ANet doing anything about it. Moreso even players that used to complain about thieves back then started to acknowledge the pityful state that thief is currently in. Personally I think thief is fine and probably the most balanced profession at the moment, it’s just not viable under these circumstances. ANet can either nerf 6 out of 8 professions, which would probably be better for the sake of this game or they just buff warrior and thief. The problem though is that thief only fits into 1 specific role, whereas warrior has always been a more versatile class.

Almost 2 years of thief history in a nutshell

Simply put: You just don’t soloQ.

Really, at this point no one right in their mind would ever defend or even do soloQ. Matchmaking sucks and solo quing puts you at a heavy disadvantage. People are delusional if they think it’s fine as it is.

Why do you think even good players like Helseth, Sizer, Caed, Phanta etc. avoid solo quing as much as possible and rather wait for some1 to que with? PvP sucks and everybody seems to realize this, well except for ANet.

Yeah lets rather keep the OP specializations as they are, this will certainly help to keep the free2players & non hot-buyers in the game when they’re constantly at a disadvantage.

#flawedlogic #pay2win #iqbelowroomtemperature

As long as S/D isn’t a viable option this class will remain a generic passive stealthcamp rezbot.

It may have lacked burst damage and was subpar against D/P, but it also offered a different playstyle other than just +1 ing and decapping. Being able to 1v1 other classes on point was a playstyle that me and many others enjoyed over D/P, yet ANet had nothing better to do than just straight out delete this gamestyle & weaponset in favor of the set that was already dominating PvP.

But its all good guyz, thieves are in a great spot according to our Dev, I mean we got decaps and +1ing n kitten.

- Chrono doesn’t seem to be as good as predicted by Lord Downseth.
- Druids overshine Bunker Guards and are even able to 1v1.
- Scrapper basically is D/D Ele 2.0, doesnt mean that D/D Ele is balanced though.
- Trap Guards probably won’t be a thing for long, they’re to gimmicky.
- Vanilla Thief became trash just as expected, Daredevil isn’t exactly great either.
- Warriors probably completly drop out of meta.

Balance reached an all time low. Specializations aren’t another playstyle just a vanilla class on steroids. Cash Money heroes, y0

bliss.4305:

Unless they have incredibly bad team mates, I’ve seen most established top-pvp streamers literally shoulder the games to victory. So I don’t agree with that whole statement.

I dunno who you’ve been watching, but thats definitely not what I’ve experienced or seen. I’ve seen ROM, Phanta, Levin, Helseth etc. lose a fair amount of their games once they soloqued. With SoloQ I mean solo, duo ques or more are a completly different story. Their soloq winratio is definitely nowhere near as good as their overall winrate. Like it or not, soloquing will ultimately lower your overall winrate and especially high MMR players get punished for queing solo. Helseth even devoted a short vid on this issue.

Infact most ESL players maintain their winrate cause they keep teaming up with 2-4 people, rarely 5 cause skyrocketing q-times.

I don’t think anybody can truly keep up a winrate of more than 60% by solo queing at the moment, no matter how good they are. This system just stacks odds against you to make you lose. GW2 isn’t CSGO, you’re dependent on your team and just can’t carry whole matches like in CSGO.

Even the top tier players start to lose quite frequently when they’re not grouping up, just watch their streams, as soon as they que alone they have the same problems as everyone else.

Nocta.5274:

Well, yeah, Thief is fine, but this change affect it a lot, so a slight buff to compensate wouldn’t be too much.
You’re saying this like I’m making a full 180 on what I usually sayu.. which is not the case at all. :/

I just feel like Vamp runes is a big part of why Thief can currently engage in some fights they couldn’t without them.

Well I think you’ll agree with me that somethings gotta be wrong with a class that solely gets carried or made viable by a particular rune set.

Vamp Runes are just braindead, its yolo passive that gets you out of jail eventhough you were supposed to die, whats even worse you can even safestomp with it.

D/P SA is passive enough already, but with Vamp runes you’re literally immortal. Out of this very specific spec, thief is garbage though. Maybe ANet finally realizes that thief isn’t as great as it is always said to be once this trash rune is gone.

No offense though, everybody got their own opinion after all.

bliss.4305:

Mark my words, GW2 is going to be the best action combat MMO come HoT.

Not with these amounts of passive procs, they’d have to go a long way to make it enjoyable. Thief now and thief on release are two completly different classes. There is no such thing as high risk high reward builds in GW2 anymore. Everythings Low Risk High Reward.

Ohoni.6057:

Seriously, just put Feline Grace and Descent into Shadows back in, problems solved, home by lunch.

Have you ever seen them revert ANY of their balance changes besides the porting behavior? They’re completly oblivious to criticism and reverting a change would actually mean that they admit to having made a mistake.

Nocta.5274:

Can we buff Thief natural defenses now that Vamp runes are nerfed ? Pretty please ?

It’s not fun to get one shotted from stuff you sometimes can’t even see coming. Vamp runes kept abusive burst to feel unfair.

Woah, you’re some special kind of hypocrite.
First claiming thief to be fine until very recently and now that Vamp rightfully gets shafted you’re starting to cry over thief balance? The hypocritism in this forum never fails to amaze me.

OT:
Only took you guys a year to realize how broken vamp runes are, congratulations. I also applaud the decision to put some gimmick WvW Rune into sPvP, thats some pro balance right there.

morrolan.9608:

The PvP in Black Desert is extremely poor.

Not gonna argue that point, but GW2 PvP isn’t exactly good either, is it? It is worse than at launch and all the passives introduced in this game rather drive pvp players away from it than attract it. They can drop in all the money they want, with the current balance and class design this game will never be true esports.

It is quite an irony that even the top players like Helseth and Levin state on stream that they rather only play the tournies and not more, because the game is more annoying than enjoyable.

Now I don’t think Black Desert will become anything close to E-sports, but people will play this game solely because of the char creator and graphics. When they do it right on EU and NA release they can definitely snatch off some players.

If Vamp runes stay the same we might aswell revert the functions of these runes:

Lyssa granting every boon on elite use
Air being able to passively crit for 5k
Svanir stunbreaking the iceblock and remaining invul

Hell, we could even introduce cancer perplexity runes.

Delete vamp, problem solved, it’s noskill casualmode.

Kicker.8203:

D/P hasn’t got evades but has everything else. They should just reduce Black powder duration and it will be fine. Permastealth is boring anyway

That would be a nerf to any D/P spec. DA/CS/TR D/P is perfectly fine though. I’d also argue that the amount of blinds through Shadowshot more than make up for the lack of evades.

Nerfing a whole weaponset just to make another set viable can never be considered good balancing, hence I propose a Shadowarts nerf, which nerfs the eazymode build and leaves a skilled one untouched.

Your saying it yourself, permastealth is boring – this just screams “nerf SA”, because its the main culprit of thief balancing.

Edit: I’ve had this discussion like a month ago, if you’re truly interested you may read my older posts, it’s pointless to discuss this again, as I can see some whiteknights (not you) stepping in and claiming SA to be balanced.

Thats all good and I’d agree on those sword changes Kicker, but even daredevil won’t make S/D viable. I haven’t bought HoT yet, but I don’t get why people are so optimistic about DD being WAY better than Acro on S/D, I don’t see that yet.

Even with those changes you won’t be able to talk about build diversity, because diversity actually implies that there are builds just as good/nearly as good as D/P SA, which is not the case and probably won’t be unless SA gets nerfed.

No offense, but name anything that S/D or S/P clearly does better than D/P. Moreso name any weakness of D/P SA that isnt a weakness of the other builds aswell. The only thing that kept SA in line was the fact that it used to be tied to useless stats.

Maybe I’m biased here, but I guarantee we won’t see a meta shift unless Shadowarts gets a hefty nerf.

TLDR: D/P SA is in the same, if not worse, situation as D/D Ele

Just gonna mention that there was a time, during S/D, when Thief was a farpoint assaulter to 1v1 Hambow (mostly) and to chase off the other thief. Both aspects are gone, thieves aren’t even 1v1ing anymore, so I don’t think “hurr durr +1ing and mobility” is a valid argument for not buffing the 1v1 potential.

MadVisions.4529:

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I can see where this idea is coming from, but I don’t think thief needs any more stealth.
Quite frankly this would make D/P SA even better due to more stealth access.

Simply put: You can’t buff anything stealth related without buffing D/P SA. So in order to get any build diversity you can buff Acro or nerf SA. As it stand right now though they would have to add things to acro that would be blatently OP to let it compete with SA.

Shadow Arts has to much easymode passive traits that make this spec far more forgiving than anything else. As long as it stays Low Risk High Reward nobody right in their mind will ever play anything else in tPvP, hence its meta.

Will only comment on S/D:

Tactical Strike damage should remain how it is, the daze duration should be the same as in PVE/WvW though, making it more rewarding to land. As of now, you can barely finish the 2nd AA chain.

I agree on the auto attack changes though, The 2nd chain should apply the cripple and the 3rd the weakness. Aftercast on AA2 is kittening terrible aswell.

Flanking strike queing won’t ever be fixed, people have been demanding this change for well over 2 years already. They can either reintroduce precasting flanking strike or reverting to 2 boons, but seeing how many builds and runes just kitten out boons these days I’d rather want the precast back in order to have some minor burst damage.

CnD needs blind instead of vuln

Even with these changes S/D wouldn’t be viable though. Nerf SA and you may get build diversity again.

Thief is only worth playing in tPvP at the moment and thats probably solely due to the fact that it has good mobility and synergizes best with a mesmer as a paintrain.

Play it outside of that environment and you feel like complete garbage most of the time, almost useless if your team rotates badly or isn’t able to sustain teamfights.

If Scrapper remains the same even D/P might fall out of meta 6s reveal every 14s in 900 range is kitten. Every classes defensive mechanics have been buffed except for thieves. First they nerf Dodges and now they even nerf the last viable build/defensive utility.

I don’t mind the nerfs to stealth spam, but atleast give us some defensive traits/boons in return.

Daredevil certainly isn’t p2w as it adds nothing to the class that could possibly rival D/P SA. Thief is rather meh overall atm and that cannot be changed by adding another traitline, as it needs baseline changes like preparedness etc.

Not even sure if DD is a better choice over acro concerning S/D. Glad I didn’t buy HoT yet.

Supreme.3164:

Some eles would like to play fresh air scepter but guess what?….players carried by stealth block any profession from playing burst, some others won’t play staff because they haven’t got an ESL team to defend them against stealth abusers..but hey as soon as eles get a build that can kills stealth abusers…we become OP and must be nerfed…..what is it d/p thief whatever? Did a d/d ele steal your puppy?…yeah cry a me a river while you camp stealth/burst because that’s totally legit (or so mesmer/thieves believe)

Let me just preface that I’m against any type of eazymode builds, no matter what class. This includes, but is not limited to: D/D Ele, D/P SA Thief, Burn Guard, Cele Necro, PU Mesmer, Shoutbow etc.

Whilst I agree that stealth has been given out too much too excessively and is usually paired with too much other good stuff (hello SA, PU), it’s a core mechanic for some classes and needs to stay in one way or another.

A lot of whine about stealth could potentially be avoided by testing the class yourself and especially by proper LoS and positioning, but thats a general problem, because a) not many players pay attention to that and b) some classes require more LoS and positioning than others with Ele rather being on the low end here.

Unless you’re playing in a team or your tryharding, I see absolutely no reason to not play fresh air. Actually I’ve pretty much only played FA Ele ever since the June patch, cuz my thief is pidgeonholed into boring D/P SA spec. The spec isn’t half as kittenome players say it is. Surely, it isn’t viable in tpvp, but I have no issues killing thieves and Mesmer isn’t that much of a problem either. Actually I’d say it does fairly good against any marauder spec, it just freaking sucks, because PVP is flooded with D/D Eles, which it sucks against.

D/D Ele is just straight out broken, no build in the world should have no counter. They can brainlessly engage in any 1v1 and have no problems to sustain 1v2 or 1v3’s.

I guess some players are just too narrow-minded to realize how OP D/D Ele is/has been. No wonder they’re living in a vacuum when all they play is Ele.

I don’t kittening care about reward tracks or skins, I just want a soloq and a working matchmaking system. I’m fed up of being matched against premades as a full solo team or getting teamed up with complete noobs, just so that my MMR averages out the whole team. Trashing the opposite team 500 – 100/200 isn’t fun either.

They already trashed this games PvP by making it kittening casual, why didn’t you guys leave the old rank system and seperate armor? Theres ZERO, literally ZERO possibility to seperate yourself from the fast majority of pve/wvw heroes.

Don’t get your hopes up guys, all they care about is cashing in and the cash flow will always be better when you please the casuals instead of listening to the small pvp community.

Phantaram.4816:

This build more than solves the survivability problem. Reduced cooldowns in earth when you have a focus is a really insane increase to survivability. Written in stone allows you to use your signet heal which is also a huge increase to survivability. Earth gives way more survivability than water ever could in a build like this.

Phanta, why Signet Mastery over Stone Heart though? I’ve played a pretty similar build ever since June:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-o3d;2B2-P0-5gMkY0;9;431G;0157058046;4IF0;3F-03F-03a0n

Haven’t tested yours yet, but Stone Heart pretty much neutralizes the builds weakness to Mesmers and Thiefs. They can’t stay in stealth infinitely, so you can just wait out their burst by camping in earth and then unleash yours.

Signet heal seems pretty much neglectable due to its low baseline heal and the cast times of signets disrupting the game flow of fresh air. The immob is nice to have, but personally I still prefer insta procs over casttimes, especially as FA Ele.

My variant probably has less overall damage due to being more defensive, but essentially it should be better against your main concerns being thief and mesmer. It sucks against sustained builds tho, dunno how yours fares against them.

Zenith.7301:

S/D thief was broken as hell; it deserved the nerfs. My S/D thief in WvW was plain stupid.

Lets see:

I love D/F+D/D

The animations for ele dagger are so pretty, and come to think of it all of them.

:’D

Why are you even replying? This isn’t the thief forum and we’re talking about scepter Ele.

Balance takes place in PvP, where S/D was already out of meta and you obviously haven’t played Daredevil in Beta, cause as of now, you’ll be better off picking no GM at all. Let the PvP players decide on balance, whilst you can continue to toddle in your wvw/pve crap.

You’re playing the worst pvp class combined with a general stereotype of rangers being pve scrubs, so yeah – don’t expect any love from other players.

With that being said, most of the flame derives rather from ANet’s terrible matchmaking than from you playing ranger. Veteran PvP players are matched up with rookies and are expected to carry them more or less. It’s neither a fun experience for them nor is it for you, thats why there is “so much” flame and toxicity.

You only need to internalize that ANet doesn’t give a flying kitten about PvP or PvP balance. Enjoy yourself and flame, trashtalk and report other players as much as possible. You can even leave or afk matches on purpose – you won’t be punished, cause no matter what you do – ANet doesn’t care.

BlackBeard.2873:

It most certainly DOES need a sustained damage boost. For burst builds, all that scepter has is burst damage but TERRIBLE sustained damage.

How would you fare with buffs though? I proposed some changes to scepter some time ago, being the following:

Flame Strike should be 0.75 with 2s burning
Shatterstone should be 0.5s cast + damage; cripple instead of vuln 4s cd
Dragon Tooth should either be AOE or 1s casttime + damage, if both CD raised to 7-8ish
Arc lightning could use a minor base damage buff, considering its long channel

Minor GM trait in air is also terribly bad, should be switched with fericious winds.

BlackBeard.2873:

Also, please don’t try to argue “well my favorite build for X class got nerfed, so this doesn’t deserve fixing too!” For S/D thief, they are doing their best to revive the play-style with daredevil. Fresh-air burst ele just continues to slide out of contention as a viable build.

Nah, that wasn’t my intention, I love playing S/F FA just as much, it’s basically the only thing I’ve played since June. I’m just pointing out that you should be cautious with buffs, because the spec is still fine against any other zerk spec and S/D teef is a perfect example of how a spec got trashed due to constant forum whine.

Thats a matter of overall balance though, not because Fresh Air is underpowered. Some things just remain to be overpowered, because ANet apparently doesn’t care to balance. One of those specs is Cele D/D though, a spec that completly outshines any other build.

Of course Scepter could use some minor tweaks, like water 2 or air & earth auto, but it most certainly doesn’t need a damage boost. I’m sorry to say this, but Eles are whining on a high level, considering that my favorite build S/D thief got straight out trashed by ANet.

BlackBeard.2873:

laquito.5269:

S/F Fresh Air is still beast against anything that isn’t running a sustained build. It’s not meta, but it’s definitely a lot better than people say it is. Also: a lot more sustain compared to pre patch.

I really don’t like being able to chose 3/5 traitlines, but for S/F FA it did wonders.

I have not had this experience. I used to play mostly S/F FA, but post-patch it just doesn’t feel like it did ANY damage. When I ran it a few times, I apologized to my team b/c I thought I was running cele amulet, but it turned out to be Marauder.

Post-change to air/fire sigils + change to traits (either less damage for us or more sustain for everybody), s/f just doesn’t apply enough pressure to force the opponent into mistakes. I have unloaded a FULL phoenix + Lightning flash + air swap + air 2 onto many players and barely gotten them below 50%.

S/F used to play like a shatter mesmer that traded in inferior access to portal/stealth for better condi-cleanse and more invulns. Now, it just has inferior damage, equivalent condi cleanse (if they are inspiration they actually have more), the same number of invulns (thanks to illusionary persona + blind on shatter), and still portal/stealth. It no longer has any +’s and -’s. It is strictly worse in every way.

Well, I can only talk about my experiences with fresh air.

Pre-Patch it felt a lot more “kill or be killed” like, I wouldn’t say it did more damage, but things dropped a lot faster, because there were not that much passive procs that could save other classes (thanks ANet btw – Casual Wars 2)

Post Patch it might not be as bursty anymore, but I have no issues surviving at all (passive defense ftw), I’d even go as far to say that I’m confident against anything 1v1 that isn’t sustained (pretty much anything besides D/D).

As I said, I can’t complain about the damage, the nocd on FA allows for far more air procs than pre patch, only thing thats been nerfed is spike power, anything else is buffed, thats why I simply don’t get the whine. It’s obvious that D/D shouldn’t be your reference point, as its straight out OP, but no wonder some players are starting to belive that, seeing that its been like this for well over a year already.