Greatsword #5 has a 0.2 coefficient with condition damage for the damage over time part, so I’d take that instead of sword/focus as your second set. For reference, burn has a 0.25 coefficient, so even though Greatsword 5 has half the base damage as a burn, it becomes almost as good as it when you have more condition damage.
Sigil cooldowns, as of right now, are shared. That will change soon, but right now using a sigil of torment and a sigil of doom is redundant.
Sigil of geomancy does more damage than a sigil of doom, and is aoe. So if healing isn’t a problem, replacing the sigil of doom with geomancy would work out well. Geomancy’s visual effect and sounds are also very satisfying.
Your precision is useful for sigil of torment and vigor. Sigil of torment isn’t very good at all, especially when it conflicts with doom or geomancy.
My suggestion would be to use a carrion set for the power instead of precision, then sacrifice a few traits to get kindled zeal which converts 13% of your power to condition damage. That way, you can do some decent damage while dealing more condition damage at the same time. The radiance minor trait that increases your damage by 10% against foes with conditions would help out a lot. There is also a trait in zeal that increases damage against burning foes by 10%.
Because you have a torch,purging flames, and judge’s intervention I doubt you’d have any problems with keeping burning on a foe. Defender’s flame becomes mostly useless.
Searing flames has a 10 second cooldown, and triggers even when the target has no boons. This makes the trait unpredictable. I don’t like those kinds of traits.
Good luck with your guardian.
What has this lead us to do: we trait to be tanks and…
No.
It has always been this way.
The difference is that our tanks aren’t impossible to kill anymore, so the other weaknesses show up more prominently.
Ele bunkers were terrible. Low on health? heal to full almost instantly. Low on health again? heal again…and again…then zip away with RTL until cooldowns are back, then jump back into battle, and so on. It was impossible to kill.
Those nerfs were needed.
The reason they appear to be undeserved nerfs is because all the non-bunker builds are crippled by low base health, leading to the once overpowered ele bunker to be the only good build except the cheesy fresh air builds.
Buffs are needed to our defences, but not to healing or other reactive defenses, otherwise we will spend all our time healing, and only healing, unable to spend time actually fighting while the other player has an annoying time trying to kill the unkillable.
My assumption is that base stats are to blame for most of it. Attempts to fix this without focusing on base stats will result in an overpowered, or underpowered class rather than a balanced one.
I have always had a major problem with my engineer.
Even when The attack would have hit because of it’s aoe, because I couldn’t face directly at my target, it would just go on cooldown. warrior rifle #5 has this issue as well, and it really becomes annoying when if I had used it without a target, it would have still grazed my target, but because I have a target selected, it cancels and goes on cooldown.
This problem is there all the time, but it only becomes a huge hindrance when I am immobilized. Just let my character shoot as close to the angle of the target as possible instead of putting it on cooldown. I need to see my attack actually hit or miss instead of using the UI to tell me that I’m wrong. Get rid of the not-facing-target cooldowns, just let me shoot in the wrong direction anyway, and I’ll be mostly okay with immobilize as it is.
Howver, I still prefer non-stacking. Imagine if stuns were stacking. for some builds, an immobilize has the same effect.
Warrior: Offhand axe.
Guardian: Shield.
Engineer: None.
Ranger : Greatsword.
Thief : The Pistol/Pistol set.
DownStatetalist : focus, especially in fire attunement.
Mesmer: None.
Necromancer : Warhorn, because it is too easy to self-interrupt the weird casting time on #5.
two thiefs killed me today and started jumping on my corpse, thats the psychology of an average thief
+1 to you, good sir!
A-net may well have done this. If they are telling people to l2p, it could actually be a l2p issue. If they say the diffrences are negligible, they are probably negligible.
They said they don’t feel that it is a problem. The keyword is feel.
Much more importantly, that was an extremely old article. Before the game was released. What was said about what they ‘feel’ about balance between races at a time so far ago has no weight at all.
I wouldn’t believe just whatever I was told, especially when the advantage is so blatantly obvious.
Do you have the kill/death ratios? For all we know they may prove that the size of the asura is somehow a disadvantage.
Nope, I just have wishful "what if " thinking.
I honestly don’t like the burning speed buff that is coming.
High damage, mobility, aoe, and a small fire field.
It already does a lot.
Adding dodge to a mostly offensive skill removes it’s counterplay.
I’m not saying that the skill will become too powerful, but that it will be less fun to play against, and will give too much for a single skill.
The upcoming changes won’t overpower warriors once again, but rather it will make them more powerful than their current overpowered state.
Such a huge amount of time without balance patches, and unwillingness to remove bad ideas (I’m looking at you, berserker stance and dhuumfire) is going to be the biggest problem. If something in this patch unbalances or overpowers something else, it may as well be permanent because of how long inbetween each patch, and how little certain things get nerfed after some superbuff(8% healing signet…).
Much faster, smaller balance updates would be a wonderful thing to help get better balance.
The kill/death ratio of an asura compared to the kill/death ratio of human, charr, norn, and sylvari in pvp would easily prove that advantages of asura, and disadvantages of charr and norn.
Don’t just wave it off saying that it will be fine if people l2p. That’s exactly what people say when defending horribly obvious imbalance.
However, that article is extremely old, so it doesn’t tell anything at all about what their current stance on the issue could possibly be.
Please then also make engineer’s Magnet pull be a giant glowing tether so I can spot it instantly. The complaints about necro marks are few and far between. I last saw a thread that was similar to this at least 1-2 months ago. It’s by no means GAME BREAKING.
Your exaggerated example is about a skill that already gives proper warning. Marks don’t give that.
Marks themselves are not “game breaking”.
Marks, alongside all the other skills across the different classes that don’t have proper telegraph, are. It is only one problem of many, but is still a problem.
1 second delay on trigger would ruin the weapon. It does poor enough damage as it is and has been nerfed already.
Also, it has the worst auto attack in the game.
I can’t believe people complain about this weapon.
You appear to be concerned about the power of the weapon.
I am concerned about the ability and chance to react to the weapon’s attacks.
Of course if it had a 0.5 to a 1 second delay for the mark to activate, there would have to be a large buff to compensate. I just figured that would be common sense, and didn’t suggest it.
I will complain about even the weakest, trashiest, most unused weapon for so long as there is no way to properly react to said weapon’s attacks.
The attacks necromancer staff has are fast casting, indistinguishable, unblockable, aoes that add long lasting conditions, and one cc. Without any sort of delay or casting time longer than 3/4 second, this weapon will not give enough chance for counterplay. I don’t care how weak or strong it is, I care that it doesn’t give a good chance to counter or avoid it’s attacks.
Ever notice that most of the builds that are complained about use things that give “immune” to attacks or conditions, use stealth, or they use attacks that cannot be reasonably reacted to, or countered against? There is a real reason for that.
Creating threads to complain about it, just like before, probably won’t work.
I really think we need some way of proving the massive difference using numbers to make a point.
Because somehow…it isn’t obvious enough already.
Chillblains and reaper’s mark have the same symbol according to the wiki.
The symbols are too glowy to make out any fine details in a hurry. Changing the color of the inner part of the symbol would make it possible to tell what symbol is what during combat and still keep the glowy style.
However, the bigger problem with symbols is the casting time.
Having that color change suggestion along with a 0.5 to a 1 second delay before the symbols trigger (possibly with a brighter glow to indicate it’s started activating) would let a person figure out what is getting cast on them and react properly, and would still not interfere with how fast marks can get laid down.
I agree that diamond skin is too powerful.
I’ve only encountered it once when playing a condition character, and overcame it easily, but it is still too powerful. No, this is not sarcasm.
Once ele gets the buff it needs, diamond skin will become impossible to win against with any condition build.
My prediction is that our future ride from useless to balanced will be cut short by getting a major nerf because of diamond skin, instant lightning bolts, and instant arcane spells. With the nerfs only possibly hitting those culprit skills and traits.
Diamond skin is a failure. It is always overpowered or underpowered. I hope they haven’t gotten too attached to that trait to change it to something else.
lol @ this thread. Surely 100% of people say more changes
It still needs to be said, even if there isn’t much to discuss.
Otherwise it is not likely to be brought to attention.
The changes have been too slow.
Changing a lot at once, unbalances more stuff at once, and it stays that way until many many months later when it gets a miniscule nerf.
Changing faster will probably create just as many mistakes as the slower speed, but will allow for it to be able to be corrected or tossed out without getting too attached to the failed idea, and without wasting so much time.
The extra credits episode “fail faster” actually appears to be a perfect answer to this question.
A: Make meditations have a cast time, but buff their effects. Instant cast skills and skills without a readable animation are terrible, no matter how powerful or useless they are.
B: Buff perfect inscription’s effect.
C: Cut the cooldown of glacial heart in half, increase it’s damage, and turn it into an aoe that has a one second delay so people can see and react to it.
Down state in pvp, as has been described multiple times, hinders skillful play and makes it next to impossible to win while outnumbered.
It is a major problem in pvp.
I don’t really have anything to say that hasn’t been said before, and am mostly just posting to add my voice to the number of people against downstate in pvp.
I have seen it far too often.
In fact, this is the number one reason I fail to finish a dungeon.
Someone has to leave, or ragequits even though we win the battle seconds later, so we free up the spot for another person to join.
We find ourselves outside the dungeon, having lost all our progress.
It turns out that we kicked the host.
Why is it always the ragequitters who host?
Why should kicking a disconnected player remove us from the dungeon?
This is usually followed by a swift disbanding of the group.
Dolyak runes stack with everything else.
You can test this sort of stuff in the pvp lobby.
Nerfing and deleting is a terrible way to approach things with the current state of the game.
Most of the problems I’ve seen with overpowered builds tended to be with builds that are impossible to react to because of short casting times or random procs, or builds like warrior hambows who have cc immunity, damage immunity, and condition immunity without having to actively react against the things they are immune against. All Asurans as well, regardless of build.
Those sorts of things need to become much more active or have a way to counter them without randomly dodging, not simply nerfed or deleted. Nerfing makes the problem smaller, but doesn’t fix it, even if it gets nerfed into uselessness.
That is the reasoning why I think this thread will become counterproductive. It points in the wrong direction.
This thread is just as wonky as the “Confusion, necro needs it.” thread over in the necromancer subforums. Unless it is a sarcastic reply of some sort?
Adding more conditions to anything other than an elementalist or guardian would cause another dhuumfire disaster, and every other class, especially warrior, will get skills and traits buffed to have condition immunity and stability to handle it again. This would result in a double disaster. Again.
Some people have been spreading nonsense about how toughness has diminishing returns. These people need to stop or a bird should crap on their house or something.
Armor scales linearly. So sure, if you add 10 armor to 2000 armor, it means a lot more than if you add 10 armor to 3500 armor. 10/2000 is a bigger %. So people think it has diminishing returns. But this is no different from health— Adding 100 health to 10k health has a bigger affect than adding 100 health to 30k health. I’ve never seen anyone say vitality has diminishing returns, but that’s because they’re ignorant.
Toughness and Vitality don’t have any diminishing returns. If you’re trying to maximize survivability, then either helps your cause. What is true is that if you have low vitality and high toughness, then it is easier to increase the vitality by a certain % than it is the toughness. That’s why lopsided is bad— you need a balance.
Fortunately, with the existence of PTV gear, you can have your cake and eat it too, the problem is how to balance it with damage and possibly healing power but that kind of sucks.
It’s also the reason why in PvE instances, berserker gear is the best use of stats. Power, Precision, and Critical Damage scale with each other. Grabbing all 3 means your damage will scale a lot faster than you can stack defense. This is why dps builds do so much more damage than their tank counterparts. Though of course this is just one reason to use dps gear in pve.
If you had 20 armor and took an attack that has 1000 damage, you would take 50 damage.
1000/20 = 50
add 5 armor and the result is 40 damage.
1000/25 = 40
So adding 5 armor to 20 armor decreases damage taken by 10
if you had 40 armor, and took 1000 damage, you would take 25 damage, half of what you would take if you had 20 armor.
1000/40=25
If you add 5 armor to that, instead of decreasing damage taken by 10, it decreases damage taken by 2.77
1000/45=22.222222
The more armor you already have, the less each point of armor is worth. There are diminishing returns.
If you have 500 health, and add 50 more health, you get 50 more health.
If you have 1000 health, and add 50 more health, you get 50 more health.
If you have 10000000 health and add 50 more health, you still get 50 more health.
1 extra health is still worth 1 extra health no matter how much you already have. There are no diminishing returns.
Claiming that other people are ignorant will only result in your own embarrassment.
Please review the math.
This might help:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminishing_returns
Thieves don’t have on crit traits for conditions. Carrion would do well here.
Rangers have one on crit condition trait, but unlike the other classes bleed on crit, this one is a 10 point trait instead of a 5 point one. Carrion would probably work well here.
Mesmers practically require precision for conditions.
Don’t do a condition elementalist.
Necromancers have two on crit condition damage traits.
Warrior conditions only have one on crit trait, but it seems to work very well with precision. Carrion might work okay here.
Engineers have two superb on crit condition traits.
Guardians have no on crit condition traits. They have a trait that gives condition damage equal to 13% of their power, and carrion gives power. Carrion works very well here. However, all my condition guardian builds have all been slightly squishy even if they could deal great damage. For those of you who don’t consider guardians to have anything more than burning, do note that guardian greatsword #5 has half the base damage as burning, but scales almost as well as burning as long as you don’t use the pull. A well timed sigil of geomancy also helps. Not the best choice, but not bad by a long shot, and is a bit different to play.
(edited by magic fly.2041)
I don’t focus a class first quite so much as I focus races.
I focus on the charr first, then the norn.
Human and sylvari comes after that, and lastly, the asura.
It is just easier to know when to attack against, defend against, and be able to target, the larger characters.
No matter how skilled or un-skilled they are, I always attack asura last. It is simply more fun fighting against something I can actually react to. Why fight something unfun?
From a pvp perspective:
No, it is not balanced.
The damage is far too much.
The animations are terrible even without fighting an asura.
The control is also insane. Blinds, cripples, chills, fear, chill again, weakness…
It is not fun to fight. Even fighting asuran thieves is more fun than this.
Moving dhuumfire to life blast is just an inability to admit that the trait was a mistake in the first place. Necromancers have too many conditions. They do not need so many different conditions just because of the notion that they are the kings of conditions. That would be like me saying that warriors should always deal more damage than anything and everything else just because they are simply the kings of physical damage.
My pve perspective of condition necromancer:
Condition cap.
Roll something else.
That would be 360 health per second after the patch.
The mesmer’s passive healing signet is 326.6 health per second, but only if they have three illusions active.
Elementalist’s passive healing signet is 168 health per attack, but I hear something along the line of the skill getting un-split so I assume after the update it would be 202 health per cast. Ele would get a good amount less than 202 health per second, and a negligible boost when using instant cast attacks.
Necromancer’s passive signet give them 325 health each time they are attacked, with a 1 second cooldown. People don’t attack exactly once every second, so I would assume it would be just as bad as ele’s passive healing skill on average. Even if the impossible happened and it gives 325 health per second, it won’t do as well as healing signet will constantly do all the time after the nerf.
For a passive healing skill that, unlike the others, isn’t situational, it should never outdo the situational ones at all when in an optimal environment that the situational ones work best in.
The elementalist and necromancer ones are the most situational, but are still the worst even when everything plays out perfectly for them.
The least situational, warrior’s healing signet, on the class with the most armor and health, is the most effective all the time without the player ever worrying about how to maximize the skill’s usage, even after the inconsequential 8% nerf.
This is a problem.
1 second minimum for proper reaction time. (Minimum!)
Maybe a tiny bit less if it is guaranteed that they will use a certain ability, but predictions are never guarantees.
However, if you play against an asura, forget about interruptions, especially if you play a charr like me. Those shrimpy things are just dots on the screen from my camera’s view.
The time spent balancing these could be better spent balancing/fixing skills that people actually use IMO.
If, for example, some skill randomly gets broken and everyone stops using it because of that, does that mean the time would be better spent elsewhere since fixing a skill nobody uses is a waste of time?
This skill has been useless since day one.
Nobody said we have problem in PVE/WvWvW but we suck big time in PVP.
Remove the PVP restrictions from the talents, give back the original healing numbers of Healing Ripple and Evasive Arcana Ele will be fine.
Bringing back the old invincible elementalist is not the solution at all.
Not by a long shot.
It doesn’t fix any problems, it just creates another.
As much as I’d like to say “no”, I have to agree with the red circle change.
It should follow the rules that the other aoe skills follow.
Random exceptions like meteor shower are detrimental.
I prefer charr for everything.
Their armor isn’t as bad as many people make it out to be, except the medium armor.
Because they are bigger but move at the same speed, they will feel slower even though they aren’t.
The animations are really good, although you could just create one of each race to compare, than stick with what you like.
You can preview the armor in the pvp locker even if you haven’t acquired the armor yet.
2800 armor? Wow, how glassy.
It’s actually 2600 in fight. Protection/blind give you A LOT MORE DEFENSE.
Exactly, protection is equal to 28 points defense. Eles and Guardians can easily have near perma protection freeing up points to put towards other useful traits. Heck a full zerk Ele with no toughness runes and 0 poitns in earth, while under effects of protection, has the same amount damage reduction as a Zerk warrior with toughness runes and 30 points in defense.
Blind is the ultimate defense, you can’t do damage when you miss, and thieves and guardians have a amazing supply of it.
A zerker ele takes 13.68% more damage than a zerker warrior.
That means that if an ele has protection on 41% the time, they will be the same as a zerker warrior with nothing.
The protection makes them barely better than a zerker warrior with no points in defense, and does not free up any points at all, it takes them all away with nothing left. A zerker warrior with no trait or utility investment gets what is almost the equivalent of 41% protection uptime for free when their armor is compared to light armor classes.
This is just armor, let’s not forget the warrior’s 7-8k extra health, and healing signet.
If an ele uses ether renewal, they can get at max 333 health per second without healing gear. They would be forced to spend 4 seconds out of every 15 seconds just healing and hoping against hopes that no stuns or dazes will hit them.
Healing signet can get 392 health per second with no activation, no need to re-cast as soon as possible, and no healing gear.
However, I can agree with you on blinds. 3+ seconds on a blind is basically a free aegis, and requires no skill to use.
DV is better than ice drake because it stacks duration now.
Don’t forget, chill is not only about slowing their movement speed, it affects recharge too.
I actually think ice drake used to be better than DV, but not anymore.
As much as I’d like all venoms to be instant, an instant healing skill would be detrimental to the game no matter how balanced it would be.
Venom share is powerful though. Giving everyone lifesteal can change the course of a fight. Using the summon thief trap with it is also fun. The problem is that it uses all utilities, and thief relies on certain utilities.
It’s not just condition immunities though, stability is just as bad.
Having a warrior run straight through a static field, be immune to my immobilize, run right over my unsteady ground that should’ve knocked him down, so he can proceed to mindlessly spam axe#1 followed by eviscerate is not fun.
A similar thing happens to my engineer. Running right over my mine, ignoring my overcharged shot, ignoring my immobilize, my toolbelt immobilize, my net turret, my rocket turret’s knockdown, and ignoring my knockback from detonating my healing turret, detonating my rocket turret, and ignoring the knockback from detonating my net turret, leaves me with no way to defend myself. I can knock out a huge lump of anyone’s health with minefield point blank, but it requires that I keep control of the fight because of my low defenses. Because of immunity to cc, and immunity to conditions, builds like mine can’t be used against any warrior at all.
The skill on focus is really useful. Chill is a potent condition, and it also removes boons and deals a decent amount of damage.
The casting time is perfect.
What is not good is the instant cast trait. Skills that can’t be dodged without randomly dodging should be changed or removed.
Honestly, ele lightning and arcane spells are really more troublesome than this trait. Because of this, I wouldn’t really complain about this trait because there is worse that needs attention.
I love the focus’s spinal shivers though. Very powerful, and gives proper warning before it hits. It is perfectly fine as it is. Unless an asura is using it, in which case you can’t see anything.
(edited by magic fly.2041)
If you are going to PvP with this, there is a trait that is absolutely essential:
Lava Tomb.
That trait actually killed me once. No kidding.
In a downed vs downed fight, it guarantees a tie even if you started at a horrible disadvantage. You even have a short time of invincibility after you activate it, fast enough for a stomp.
The only one that beats it in a downed vs downed fight is ranger’s downstate.
Don’t forget, this is a downstate skill we are talking about. None of them are, or should ever be, spectacular.
Condi Elementals are great for 1vs1 or even better 2v1. There is however one Major thing wrong with the ele condi skills. Half the skill’s don’t actually do the tick times or dmg is says they will do. Easiest one for you to test out to see the problem is Drakes Breath. should be a 4 second tick skill but it ticks for a lot longer. So when it should tick for 2-3k every second for 4 seconds. what it actually does is tick for around 800 for 13-15 seconds.
If you look at the bottom right of the burn symbol, you will see a 4, meaning that the burning will be applied 4 times. The damage shown is the total damage of the skill’s burning.
It is working and showing mostly as intended.
(edited by magic fly.2041)
Stun, evade, and medium damage all at once is a rather large amount to have in a single skill.
However, it keeps the thief in place, and I’ve noticed, in pve at least, that the evade doesn’t last the whole skill.
It is balanced because the class that uses it has low base health, and the evade is useless outside of pvp. It has a lot of potential to become unbalanced again in the future, but for the current moment, I’d say that it is a non-issue.
I’ve got 250 of them with no way to use them all up.
I certainly hope one of those weaponsets gives some damaging water spells instead of healing.
Hopefully some decent conditions on one of them as well.
What will happen to conjure weapons when this comes?
Also curious to see what melee professions will do with a staff and scepter.
It will probably be a long time coming.
The base stats and healing signet aren’t the biggest problem from my perspective, though they are a big problem that adds a lot.
Stability and berserker stance.
Having immunity to all forms of cc, and immunity to all condition builds prevents anyone from slowing them down.
It is not fun to have every attempt to gain control of the battle met with a brainless “immune”.
Stealth is a flawed concept.
Of course there will be complaints.
Even the small stealth on rangers and engineers is annoying.
Those are not troll threads. Those are legitimate complaints about a mechanic that destroys the fun of the game.
1. Elementalist
2. Ranger (every attack looks like another autoattack.)
3. Guardian Condition builds. (Still better than Elementalist’s condition builds though.)
My condition guardian does more damage than my condition ele.
Binding blade and huge amounts of burn, along with the toughness needed to effectively use sigil of geomancy beats condition ele by a long shot.
Don’t do it. It is the only class I would never use condition damage on.
If you want to play pvp, use asura. Nobody will be able to see what skills you are using.
I prefer charr, and all my characters have been charr because human is boring, norn is a plump human with decreased brain cells, sylvari are portrayed as perfect treehuggers who never do bad unless they turn 100% rotten, and asura I don’t know why, but I don’t like them either.
Asura and a few of the charr have the best personal stories. The others have generic “oh no, bad guys” stories.
If you play pvp alot, and are worried about becoming a major target, don’t use norn or charr.
Regardless, I use charr in pvp.
I don’t think choosing leopard actually makes a difference at all. It’s just there to provide you with the illusion of choice.
(edited by magic fly.2041)
In case of a thief, I can hang around their group all the while stealthing, all for kittens and giggles, and leave when I decide I’ve had my fun. Maybe even take a couple caught out of position. And this is regardless of how squishy I’m built. Do you not see this as something that’s imbalanced?
Absolutely not. Why? Because it’s by design.
I hate it every single time someone uses that kind of sentence.
Even if there was a class that nobody could ever lose with, and kills everything in one hit, you could use that same sentence to defend it. That argument holds no ground whatsoever.
The other thing, if the thief gets overrun, they have to run and hide?
NO!
If a player gets overrun, they die. As simple as that.
If a class can back out at any time, rather than predicting the loss ahead of time and backing out then, it becomes imbalanced.
“Checkmate”
“Nope, I activate stealth. Stinks to be you.”
(edited by magic fly.2041)