Guild Wars 2

Bit of a bummer for me, as someone who’s doing a lot more solo/small-scale roaming than zerging I think the new map actually had way more potential than Alpine. Desert maybe has a little too much vertical shenanigans and those big kitten keeps take away way too much map space that could have been used in more interesting ways than just creating additional distance between outer walls and keep lord.
Desert with Alpine keep sizes and therefor more open ground to fight big battles on and some toning down of the choke-pointy pathing would make an excellent map imo, but then again that would take way too much effort to change, so anything that brings players back to WvW before it’s completely forgotten about probably is a step forward.

Regardless, since Mike O Brien has taken over it feels like there’s someone in charge who’s willing to base future development on player feedback and actually establish some meaningful dev <=> player communication for the first time ever since release, which is a huge improvement just on its own already. I’m just hoping it didn’t happen too late.

Xunleashed.5271:

Rebound:
reduce cooldown to 30 seconds OR rework it: give all 4 elemental auras and convert 3 conditions into boons on cast

Considering what they have in mind with Tempest (supporting cleanse + heal bot) that whole ignoring the next lethal blow and get healed instead actually makes sense, problem is Rebound needs a lot more than just a CD buff then, thats how completely useless it is right now (when used as intended).
The other day I 1v1’d another roaming Tempest in WvW and shortly before I wanted to acknowledge some respect to him for not trying to FGS away and fighting to his death instead that guy actually shouted “Rebound!”. Ugh. I mean, I even instantly broke it on purpose by lightning flashing a burning speed on top of his head because that pathetic heal is even weaker than getting the aura in most situations.
The heal needs to buffed up to a point where it restores some 25-75% max HP (scaling with Healing Power) so the correct play for the enemy would be to recognize it and let it run out (triggering only the then weaker aura effect) instead of having a good laugh, breaking it and then finishing the guy off with the next auto attack.

According to Mike O Brien there is some WvW changes in the works. Not sure if that’s to be considered good news though. They decided to put Karl in charge of balancing WvW, and for some reason and I can’t help but feel like when Karl is done with WvW, those new maps are our smallest problem.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

I’ve been in the middle of no where, with no one around me, no guild buffs from objectives, no foods, pets on passive, no runes/sigils that might apply burning and no combo fields and have applied burning to NPC’s with every few hits.

When that is the case you should post it in the bugs forum.

erKo.9586:

Karl is working specifically on WvW-focused skill balance.

Welp.

Roman God of War.6953:

I have been an arena net customer for 10 years my friend. Been here since the launch of gw1. Two years from now will be my 12th year, just to keep things in perspective.

Not sure what being an ArenaNet customer for 10 years has to do with GW2 and especially these forums (btw, since I actually did play GW1 from launch on I’m pretty sure it was released in April 2005, so that would make it 11 years, just sayin’), I just found that post of yours dating to July or August 2014 in which you state ‘i am new to GW2 also’, which makes it look like you arrived kinda late to the party.

Roman God of War.6953:

I know WHY they are posting, I am saying it is in the wrong place.

How can it be the wrong place when there is no right place? Any place is as bad as the next.

Roman God of War.6953:

Everyone seems to forget there business model is B2P.

Nope. It’s actually F2P (free to play) with microtransactions and a P2W (pay to win) option.

Roman God of War.6953:

You would spend this same amount of money on Witcher, Fall Out, Pokemon, Legend of Zelda, Assasins Creed….

You have 0 say in the development in those titles. You have 0 interaction with those developers ever.

It might not be the best of ideas to compare it to games from completely different genres (especially not when it completely backfires, see the Witcher thing above, but w/e). GW2 is an MMO with a huge emphasize on competitive PvP (as established by ArenaNet themselves). So compare it to LoL, Dota2, etc. I don’t think I need to say anything about how ArenaNet compares to the developers of these titles in terms of interaction & communication with their player base…

Roman God of War.6953:

IMO any communication is amazing and something to keep in perspective.

Yea well, if you like being treated like kitten that’s fine for me. But don’t demand from others to like being treated like kitten as well.

Roman God of War.6953:

I personally have over 2000 hours in gw2. That is SO many for only spending 100 bucks(thats base and expansion put together).

So dumping a lot of hours for a few bucks into something makes it ok when everything goes down the drain later on? I can’t quite agree on that.

When zerging you can still do reasonably well without access to elite specs.

When roaming (solo or small scale) you’re nothing but a walking loot bag for anyone with access to elite specs.

Roman God of War.6953:

FYI – Gaile isn’t a profession developer. Don’t mean to target you directly but ALOT of responses on this thread HAVE suggestions in them. My topic doesn’t have the [suggestion] tag nor does the content of the topic seem like something a profession developer would click on. Something more along the lines of anyone on the social front for anet.

Not sure what posting suggestion after suggestion on this thread does but confuse anyone going through the comments :/

People are posting suggestions in this thread because they feel like this is the last straw they could possibly grasp as this is the one and only thread with a dev response within almost 15 kittening pages of threads full of suggestions and feedback (that all were conveniently ignored). Looks like you haven’t been around here for too long, so maybe get accomodated to this place before starting to critique its native inhabitants.

Roman God of War.6953:

I think it is self-centered to be so rude to someone when they have to work likely more then 8 hours a day on development, and rob them of family/personal time to read our feedback. If I were them I would ignore a toxic community in a heartbeat, but anet employees seem to be up to taking our abuse for some silly reason.

Getting on the forums to gather feedback and interact with their PAYING CUSTOMERS is the very least these guys can do, it’s their kittening job. People getting annoyed for being ignored or getting bullkitten responses like Gaile’s in this very thread (1st quartely update was “marvelous”? rofl shut the f up already) for YEARS is just natural I’d say. Maybe you’ll realise this one day when in 2 years you’re looking back at this thread realizing it did exactly nothing despite Gaile’s shiny responses.

Shadowflare.2759:

We’re better off asking for them to take a look at core ele and make that playstyle be competitive again, but even that is a long shot going by their recent actions.

We’re better off suggesting options, demanding dev responses and trying to take influence on the next Ele elite spec as early as possible.

Core Ele, just like any other core profession, is never gonna be competitive again. From HoT release onwards, it’s go elite spec or go home.

Exciton.8942:

I think d/d is probably the best roaming set. d/f is good but ride the lightening is really good in open field. If you go with d/f, you will certainly need teammates with great mobility.

Trait wise, I think you will need Tempest/Water. The other trait line depends on your style. Earth/Air/Arcana should all have their advantage.

Regarding RTL: I wouldn’t give offhand dagger an advantage over offhand focus due to this. It isn’t even that great for just getting across the map (unless you trait Air for CD reduction, in which case it gets pretty decent but still not on par with certain other professions). As mentioned somewhere above, I still prefer D/D usually, but I mostly attribute this to having played it almost exclusively ever since release, rather than actually being the stronger build. Offhand dagger is slightly more mobile and offers a little more damage, but offhand focus is just vastly superior in terms of defense and “utility”. The buffed Gale is HUGE and Obsidian Flesh is just the single best defensive skill we have access to. Then add lots of projectile hate and ranged Chill & Daze on top off that.

Regarding Traitline choices: I don’t agree one has a choice here. You will need good Protection uptime, otherwise you just die to Thief autos and power Revs. Earth would be the natural choice here for Protection on Auras, but I could see Arcana working as well due to Elemental Attunement. That already narrows it down to TempestWater + Earth/Arcana.
Even pre-HoT, d/d Ele already struggled against certain condi builds though (Mesmer & Necro mostly). With post-HoT power creep factored in, I just don’t see how you could possibly beat a perma chilling Reaper without Diamond Skin, so we’re effectively down to TempestWaterEarth.

Grimreaper.5370:

I’ll answer your question with Gokil’s quote,

“The best we can hope for at this point is for non-elite specs to become viable. But even that is very optimistic.”

Sadly, that’s not even being optimistic. It’s straight out delusional.

The new business model is pretty obvious: Free2Play base game access with Pay2Win expansions. HoT has put base professions into trash tier, and that’s where they’ll continue to be. The only thing one can hope for is for the next ele elite spec to live up to player expectations more than Tempest did, and that’s about it.

Trait-wise there is only 1 build post diamond skin nerf, which is Water-Earth-Tempest. You could get away without relying on Water and instead opting for (fresh) air before they trashed diamond skin, though that has always been more of a high risk high reward kind of thing (significantly more damage due to air, but when someone managed to break your HP threshold and stack a good amount of conditions on you things went south pretty fast). These times are gone though, anything that doesn’t involve the meta traits pretty much melts to conditions instantly now. Also, forget about the old D/D arcana build, base professions ain’t nothing but free loot bags for elite specs.

Weapon wise D/F probably is the strongest setup, though personally I prefer D/D. Dunno, it’s just more mobile and has a nice flow to it. Statswise, full celestial. Still a pretty kitten strong build in 1v1 and 1vX, but don’t expect to kill things fast.

Except what is played there isn’t really an Elementalist anymore, it’s a Monk pretending to be an Elementalist.

When I first read about them not planning to include the Monk profession in GW2 I immediately thought this was a horrible idea, as a two Monk backline had always been the core of competitive GW1 and it was hard to imagine competitive PvP without a dedicated healer/support class. Now it seems they have finally realized this and changed their mind about it, which in a way is good thing, but as always, ANet still manages to kitten it up in the most hilarious way possible, which is by morphing the Elementalist into a Monk, instead of tossing the Revenant (its a bullkitten concept anyways) into the trashbin and actually bringing the Monk profession back into the game with the expansion. Which would have also gotten them a chance at actually designing a support class that is challenging and fun to play, rather smashing your head on the keyboard for AoE heals and condi cleanses by triggering passive effects on skillspam.

RtL isn’t going to get buffed back up ever, just accept that. Also, why would they even waste time working on skills of a class they just intentionally removed from the game?

Why would anyone play this sPvP trash?

You expected ANet to actually slightly tone something down instead of completely butchering it? That’s not something these guys are capable of. If you speak to Karl and ask him to name a number slightly lower than 10, the answer will be -34256076. That’s how ‘balancing’ at ANet works, stuff is either complete trash or completely over the top, there is no inbetween those two options.

Nothing to discuss really. That’s just what happens when you’re trying to go full on #esports in a game that has a 150 player base (slight exaggeration, but you get the point), because that basically limits you to two options:

a) Mess it up with horribly imbalanced matches (premade teams vs. random teams, big differences in MMR/league ratings, etc.)

b) Mess it up by providing fair matches (no premade teams vs. random teams, no big differences in MMR, etc.) that result in ridiculous queue times.

Either way, you mess it up.

Blue Hare.8612:

Phantaram [Abjured], arguably one of the best elementalist players doesn’t think the new diamond skin is a nerf, altho he says that it kind of is a nerf and kind of isn’t. Couple of quotes from his stream: “The diamond skin is not really a nerf”, “I think the Diamond Skin change is a buff to the old one”

I give more credit to Phantaram than some random dude from the forums. You can watch the stream here: http://www.twitch.tv/phantaram/v/35802778 Mentioned part is at 2:30:25

Altho, it could be that Phantaram is an ignorant fool as well, who knows…

This is the same Phantaram who claimed Water + Arcana won’t be mandatory trait lines anymore once Tempest gets released, right? Let’s see how that worked out: Well, Water is as mandatory as ever, and in case you’d still decide to go for d/d you’d most likely bring Arcana as well. Conclusion? Playerskill doesn’t necessarily translate into accurately predicting the results of upcoming changes to the game. I don’t see a reason to have more faith in Phantaram than some random dude from the forums tbh.

I literally cannot remember the last time I lost a 1v1 on d/f fresh air tempest in WvW, I’d call it pretty viable for roaming.

As for specific builds, well, that’s mine: d/f fresh air

At times I like to switch the cele trinkets for zerker though (more oomph on air overload). With all the protection, damage reduction & passive healing going on power builds basically can’t touch it, and since most all condi build players in WvW like to exploit full dire stats, diamond skin alone takes care of that.

When running with a group, switch to the tempest heal instead of restoration signet.

For zerging, use stone heart instead of diamond skin and rebound instead of FGS.

This build will most likely be trashed with upcoming balance patch though, as the new diamond skin won’t be able to deal with dire perplexity cheese anymore. Maybe ether renewal can save it, otherwise water line will get mandatory again.

Anyone claiming new DS is a buff has no idea what they are talking about, plain and simple. New DS is complete trash for the exact reasons listed, but that was ANet’s plan anyways. When they identify a trait as ‘we dont like’ or ‘people whine about that’, they don’t really ‘change’ it, they just get rid of it. Now they obviously can’t just delete the trait, and a flat out obvious nerf will create a kittenstorm, so instead they turn it into garbage but give it a more generous hp treshold, so for someone uninformed it looks like they tried to keep it viable.

Truth be told though, any decent condi build will just rip through that new DS before it even cleanses a 2nd condition, so comparing a trait that used to potentially neglect an entire initial burst of conditions to a trait that now cleanses 1 condition and then you die.. well, doesn’t look like much of a buff to me.

I actually think this is a really promising preview. In the sense of, sPvP is going even further down the drain, so I’ll finally feel no urge whatsoever to play their BS when that crap goes live.
Now all we need is a complete seperation between sPvP and WvW/PvE skills & trait-wise, so Karl and his comrades can’t ruin the fun I’m having in WvW when driving sPvP farther into the ground.

Wolfric.9380:

3s resistance on swap will be garbage. A cleanse does not fit earth. Well it can be something like cleanse on protection but this would be powerful. cleanse on stability would be weak / very build specific and i would never use it. I do not use DS currently. It must be something i take to counter especially condi reaper or its out for me.

This would be great:
You are imune to chill. Nothing more …

It will be a cleanse/removal effect, they already explicitly stated that. No more immunity/avoidance. This of course means you can forget about the new effect ‘countering’ condi reaper and the likes, as pure condition builds easily overwhelm even multiple cleanses.

Wolfric.9380:

Flat -20% condi duration would propably the easiest thing to implement …..

That’s not really condition ‘removal’ though.

Most likely it’s either gonna be ‘remove condition(s) when applying protection[/stability]’ or a cheap ‘cleanse X conditions every Y seconds’.

Since they discovered that idea of ‘normalizing’ traits, numbers for the latter option might as well be X = 1 and Y = 10, because I guess for ANet it would seem appropiate to ‘normalize’ an ele grandmaster trait to the powerlevel of other professions adept traits after they already started ‘normalizing’ ele major traits to the powerlevel of other professions minor traits.

Luclinraider.2317:

All I see is people saying “They will ruin it, it’s as simple as that”

Honestly. They HAVE to ruin it.

I play every class except Warrior and as someone who actually plays Tempest quite a bit in SPvP….I can easily say Diamond Skin is the best trait out of any class, period.

I’m hoping it’s still viable after the nerf…but make no mistake, it has to be nerfed.

Well I also play Tempest quite a bit, and I can easily say it’s one of the worst grandmaster traits in the entire game. It’s absolutely pathetic on its own, therefor needs to be backed upped by a decent amount of toughness, high protection uptime + passive healing (regeneration & soothing mist) as well as semi-active healing (elemental bastion), and even then it stops working as soon as some amount of power damage gets involved.

If anything, the fact it’s still being used (being the go-to earth gm trait even) should tell you something about the state of conditions tbh, especially considering diamond skin has to actually compete with stone heart, which is one of the most awesome traits the class has access to. Conditions are running rampage, and seeing a build that already has MASSIVE condition removal still opting for diamond skin instead of stone heart should be an alarming indicator that there’s something wrong with conditions, not diamond skin.

These guys have no business fiddling with diamond skin before they start getting conditions right. Conditions are getting applied at rates far superior to anything that cleanses them, and therefor offer no counterplay other than 100% avoidance for classes/builds that are naturally susceptible to them (ele being the prime example of this).

Furthermore, sPvP isn’t even the worst offender here, as it lacks certain options that push conditions completely over the line. Condition builds running full dire stats, perplexity runes + condition duration food are pure cancer in WvW roaming, and diamond skin is quite literally the only thing able to beat them. I know Karl & co do not give a single kitten about WvW, but some players still do (a lot more previously did), and it might not be the best of ideas to ruin that already dying game mode even more by elevating dire perplexity builds back to godmode status, when they claim to have some ‘big’ WvW things in the pipeline.

Don’t get me wrong here: Yes, diamond skin is a terrible design, I always said that and I still do – see my post in a different thread some months ago:

makku.2508:

It’s super cheesy. An absolute waste of a trait against anything running a bare minimum of power, and an auto-win against anything that completely skips power in favor of condition damage.

In a well designed game featuring a vague idea of balance, I’d say get rid of this BS and rework it into something useful. In a game like GW2 it absolutely has its place tho. Nothing better than countering their cheese with your own cheese.
Not particularly beneficial for the overall health of the game, but I guess that idea has been ripped apart, set on fire and thrown out the window long ago in GW2.

Furthermore, the current tempest meta (aura/cleanse/heal bot) is an absolute plague and should not exist in the game.

BUT before they start nerf.. err.. working on that, they need to fix the things that actually caused this mess, because otherwise they will again do what they’ve done (wrong) for years: Forcing classes into the undesired meta build even more because the collateral damage done to the non-meta builds hurt them even more than the meta one.
I enjoy running a fresh air d/f tempest build that doesn’t abuse soldier runes, which is not only much more fun to play than water+earth, but also a lot more healthy for the game; yet this build will fall apart the second they trash diamond skin, because it will then get absolutely rekt by condition abuse, so I’ll be forced into water + soldier runes as well just to have a shot a surviving against them. This seems pretty odd considering their claims of build diversity being one of their highest priorities, and is also the reason I’m not particularly excited for the upcoming changes; Yes, please rework diamond skin into something decent, and yes please remove aura/cleanse/heal bot tempest from the game, but don’t do so before you acutally fixed the root cause for that meta build, because otherwise collateral damage done to the non-meta builds will force us into the meta build even more.

Not much to speculate about tbh. They’ll ruin it, easy as that.

Tizzle.4283:

With the patch coming soon it would be the right time to give ele proper elites.

Sorry to break your bubble, but that’s never gonna happen.

With the absurd power creep introduced by HoT, fixing that issue should be their no. 1 priority anyways; I’d gladly see ele elite skill changes being pushed back when that means the base profession players I encounter during WvW roaming are no longer free loot just because I happen to run an elite specialization. I don’t appreciate pay2win, and if my ele could do without a proper elite skill for more than 3 years, I can easily do without for another 3.

Now even if they manage to do that (unlikely, given their track record and the very plausible scenario of power creep expansions being part of the business model), you still shouldn’t get your hopes up for any actual elite skill until they release the next ele elite specialization and with it the next elite skill.
FGS, GoE & Tornado have been in the game in pretty much their current incarnations basically since release, they won’t change anytime soon (read: never).
Rebound was rushed between two beta weekends and should have never made it past beta (not even past design phase tbh) in its current form; yet it did and therefor perfectly showcases the amount of kittens the devs have given about it; I do not anticipate any major changes to it any time soon.

Best we can hope for is some number adjustments and minor changes, like FGS #4 could use a range increase (1.200) and at the very least always travel the complete distance (afaik it currently only does if your target is in range, otherwise it will perform the ~600 range ‘sprint’ but not the ~300 range leap).

Yashuoa.9527:

Comon ppl, dont give up on changes.

Yeah well, Eles basically never had an actual ELITE skill to begin with.

From the official site: “[..] customize your character by earning a wide range of racial skills, healing skills, profession skills, and devastating elite skills as you play.”

From the wiki: “Elite skills are especially powerful skills designed to be used infrequently and have a dramatic effect on the tide of a battle.”

Not a single elementalist “elite” skill in the game fits that description; heck, running on my human ele in WvW I’d rate Reaper of Grenth higher on the impact-on-the-tide-of-a-battle scale than any of my actual class “elites”.

So, more than 3 years after the release of the game, and the devs just having introduced our new “elite” skill which, quite frankly, managed to beat even or prior “elites” in terms of oh-man-why-do-i-have-to-pick-an-elite-skill-just-let-me-have-a-4th-cantrip-pls, what exactly do you expect people to do? Give feedback and propose changes while Karl sits there, genuinely amused with his comrades all thinking “lol look at those fools believing their class deserves an actual elite skill, go on boys, had a good laugh”?

To be perfectly honest, Tempest pretty much needs a complete rework (or just shove it into the trash bin and give us a new elite specialization).

Dunno what Karl was doing all these years, but putting a elite specialization into the expansion that suffers from the very same design flaws the base class has for YEARS is kinda beyond me.

The two main issues with Ele ever since release have been:
a) 2 Traitlines (Water + Arcana) have been pretty much mandatory in a competitive setting
b) Cantrips are effectively the only viable utilities.

This results in the most viable build heavily relying on sustainy / defensive traits & utilities + high uptime of various boons.

Now taking a look at Tempest, the sole reason it may be considered viable is Fresh Air. This locks Tempest into 2 mandatory traitlines as well, Air and, quite obviously, Tempest.
The build that can be considered the most viable utilizes Shout utilities for their auras and their respective synergies with certain traits (Zephyr’s Boon, Elemental Shielding, Elemental Bastion, possibly Invigorating Torrents).
All this ends up in a elite specialization that is locked into certain traitlines, has only 1 viable set of utilities and relies on high boon uptime via aruas. Does that sound familiar?

Congrats Karl, you just re-released the base ele, but at least you managed to swap offhand dagger for offhand focus and replaced cantrips with shouts.

And this rant doesn’t even include the super hilarious concept of putting yourself in the frontline without any option of active defensive for 4s straight while running on the lowest base hp + lowest base armor in the entire game. Or that new ‘elite’ skill being a good candidate for the worst-skill-in-the-game award.

Not pre-ordering their BS was the best decision I ever made regarding GW2.

It’s super cheesy. An absolute waste of a trait against anything running a bare minimum of power, and an auto-win against anything that completely skips power in favor of condition damage.

In a well designed game featuring a vague idea of balance, I’d say get rid of this BS and rework it into something useful. In a game like GW2 it absolutely has its place tho. Nothing better than countering their cheese with your own cheese.
Not particularly beneficial for the overall health of the game, but I guess that idea has been ripped apart, set on fire and thrown out the window long ago in GW2.

ANet doesn’t consider WvW a gamemode worth to be balanced. Changes are made based on the current sPvP metagame, and then applied game-wide without any thought about the impact & consequences on the other gamemodes.

I’ve given up hope on these guys long before. I’d just appreciate if they’d finally start rolling out these changes exclusively to their idiotic sPvP game mode that is pretty alienated from the rest of the game anyways and isn’t even remotely relevant in esports whatsoever, instead of consistently kittening with the class game-wide when it’s not even close to being a problem anywhere besides that crappy conquest based abomination called sPvP.

I believe you did not fully get a grasp of ANet’s balancing policy yet. ANet seems to like normalizing, yes.. but only if that results in a nerf to elementalists. At the end of the day, they don’t really like to normalize.. they just like to nerf elementalists.

Mirrodin.8729:

Whats is the optimal gear? I see metabattle has a build with celestial but it says gvg and then a test build with berserker gear, same info, same all just gear difference

What would be a optimal setup?

Full celestial isn’t really needed, and quite a lot of people actually prefer not running full celestial even if they could since full cele is quite low on raw power rating and quite high on condition damage and healing power. General goal would be to aim for I guess around 350-450 worth of celestial stats, then fill the rest with knights, zerker and possibly soldier as you see fit.

Mirrodin.8729:

How d/d deals against common roamers? Like d/p thief and “hard to play mesmer”

D/D ele is “ok” for roaming in the sense that you won’t die a lot. You also won’t kill a lot though. Roaming meta currently boils down to PU condi mesmer pretty much, which is a horrible matchup for d/d ele (and pretty much everyone else as well). You can try to counter his cheese with your own cheese and go for diamond skin, but if that guy isn’t miserable and has some backup power gear you’ll lose again after he stealthed ooc and equipped enough power to bring you below 90% hp. Good news is he doesn’t have a lot of killing potential on you unless you decide to kill yourself by going full frenzy through 10 stacks of confusion, so you can just casually walk away from them.

Mirrodin.8729:

How hard is to flip a camp? No upgrades, some guards and fully upgraded

Flipping camps is easy peasy. If you know where to pull & how to kite NPCs on each layout you even flip fully upgraded ones without problems.

Well they don’t even have an idea about what to do with the class as a whole. Three years of random changes to traits, random nerfs, random buffs, random might adjustments, rune changes etc. and we’re practically still where we started off, except for that RtL kittenup. Did anyone really expect them to magically invent the perfect specialization for a class they had been screwing around with for 3 years straight without ever actually getting anything significant done?

MaXi.3642:

you know what is funny? the irony that everyone uses elemental attunement because it’s such an important, awesome and strong trait, but everyone is so surprised when it gets moved to grandmaster… isn’t it where core strong traits belong? I remember it started as an adept trait and everyone was freaking out when they moved it up… it’s really kind of funny

You didn’t really get the context. People are not upset/surprised Elemental Attunement gets moved to GM; people have issues with both Elemental Attunement AND Evasive Arcana being GM traits, since these two traits (and also Renewing Stamina for anything but Staff) are core to every single elementalist build (pvp, dunno about pve).

Put Evasive Arcana down to Master, and I’m sure nobody will complain about Elemental Attunement being GM. As of now, their planned changes are not just about putting Elemental Attunement to where it belongs, but also a flat out nerf to every single elementalist build out there.

Yea, ANet and their attempts of creating build diversity.. has certainly worked out AWESOME in the past. /s

I fear Ele build diversity is going nowhere before these guys finally realize the following: If there’s a handful of builds max for a given class with one build already outshining the others in a competitive environment, and EVERY SINGLE ONE of them utilizes the exact same trait combination in a certain traitline, well what’s gonna happen if you screw that up? Nothing but the already strongest build becoming even stronger relative to the others. How that is supposed to create build diversity is beyond me, and how people who are getting kittenin payed for these kind of things still rely on that flawed logic irritates me to highest degree.

If it truly was about build diversity, they’d need to make both EAs baseline (as that is what any ele is running anyways right now), and then offer a solid choice of additional traits to go along with these.

I actually love it in its current state. Steamrolling those WvW perplexity cheese horsepoop builds without them being able to do jack kitten is just priceless. Kinda giving them some of their own medicine.
There’s those 2 servers in EU where literally EVERYONE who’s doing some kind of small scale roaming is running perplexity, regardless of class even, and I really don’t wanna miss my cheese build against theirs. 1v3ing a guild roaming group while staying at a healthy 95% HP because those guys decided a condi spamming necro isn’t enough and therefor went perplexity on their 2 kittening warriors is too glorious to rework.

At this point I don’t even care about them fixing population imbalance altogether, because let’s face it that’s not gonna happen.

I’d be a happy little customer already if they could finally just fix the godkitten matchmaking to prevent servers from getting stomped in matchups they have no business participating in due to atrociously unfair population & coverage issues.

I just logged in for some quick WvW fun, checked our server’s TS to find out literally nobody’s there (at this time of the day you’d expect at least one big public raid) which already gave me an idea about what’s going on (same that has been going on in most matchups the recent weeks). Jumped on a non-home borderland and headed for western spawn camp – fully upgraded?! ..uhm, ok, outnumbered buff so we’re prolly around 3-5 people max on this map. They also have a scout in that camp, but I figure w/e because with that amount of people I’m not gonna do anything other than flipping camps anyways, so I can as well just try that 250 camp. I pull some of the guards and start killing them, scout joins but isn’t much of a threat so I continue for like half a minute when 3 additional enemies make their way to the camp guns blazing. I disengage and abuse the invulnerability spot, initial scout emote spams me for humiliation. I wait for his buddies to leave, kill him and take a look at the camp again – 2 scouts now. Ye…

Port back to spawn, heading east for the southern camp. Just as I arrive, a 30 men guild blob waltzes over the camp. Back to spawn → Log Out → Exit.

I am sooooo close to just switching servers, but since the server I’d aim for is in compareable matchups pretty regularly as well and I’m not in the mood to throw my money at them for my troubles, it’s just gonna result in a week without logging in. Again.

Saturn.6591:

^ I dunno, but if you go for pack runes and thus stack less might, you will most likely need to build a bit less tanky in return, which means you lose out on survivability… if you want to keep your dmg on the same level, that is.

Or do I get that wrong? Has anyone done the math on this?

It’s not like Pack runes are vastly inferior to Strength/Hoelbrak in terms of damage. People seem to always forget about the additional Fury + Precision, you’re critting a lot more with Pack runes compared to Strength/Hoelbrak.

On top of that (speaking D/D here), Pack runes allow for perma swiftness with just Updraft + Staff Air4 (YO ANET IF ANYONE’S READING THIS, OUT-OF-COMBAT WEAPON SWAP FOR ELES IN HoT PLOX), so you can go for Elemental Shielding in the Earth trait line rather than Zephyr’s Boon in Air, which adds a kittenton of survivability and definitely pushes you above any other D/D build utilizing Air traitline over Earth, regardless of rune setup.

With Strength/Hoelbrak your Burning will be ticking for higher numbers, but apart from that I’d say Pack runes are better suited for WvW (especially considering how heavily -condi duration food is abused in WvW, which makes your burning much less valueable anyways).

Novuake.2691:

Kitten, its like people think the world is ending.

Its one day, allow some people their fun. Thanks.

See I’m all for April’s Fools pranks (if done right, that is), and while some people certainly overreact, it’s still hell of a dumb thing they pulled there. I do not consider it ‘fun’, at least not after the first minute. From there onwards it is annoying (highly annoying), and that’s about it. It has no place in WvW, and even in PvE there should at least be a way to get rid off it entirely after that first minute of fun when heading into the potential hours of annoyance.

I appreciate they put some effort into it, but I guess we should also tell them if the result of their work sucks, no?

It’s hard to give input on stats because most of it really comes down to personal preference and playstyle. Yours will most likely work, I used to run a build with a wild mix of knight, valkyrie, cavalier, soldier and some cele parts that resulted in a pretty similiar stat distribution. That build has been more on the tanky side of things from my perspective, but it certainly did its job. Nowadays I’m running knight daggers, soldier armor (pack runes) & zerker trinkets, which from my experience is a little less forgiving but the significantly higher raw power rating makes it worth for me (others might think different).

Concerning the Doom sigil – at times I run it, at times not. Dunno really, in a non-food environment it’s great, but reduced condition duration food is HEAVILY abused in WvW. So once you start realising almost every other solo roamer who is good enough to actually stretch a fight long enough for Doom sigil to pay dividends is running -40% condi duration food anyways, you’ll probably start trying alternatives as well. I’m pretty fond of Air atm, but my pack rune setup’s high/perma fury uptime most likely makes much better use of it than strength/hoelbrak.

Ario.8964:

[..] giving you a positional advantage over a thief [..]

There is no such thing as ‘positional advantage’ in terms of weapon range when the other guy can pretty much instantly gapclose more than your max range with shadowstep mechanics abuse shenanigans. Just sayin’.

crouze.3078:

Now let us look at what they gain from 6 points in SA:

• 323 hp / sec in stealth
• remove 1 condition every 3 seconds in stealth
• 2 initiative when entering stealth
• 2x 15s might when entering stealth

Try to compare it to a celestial ele and you’ll see that thief is nothing compared to it.

elementalist gets like:

• perma regeneration (230 hp / sec)
• more heal
• perma protection
• 10 might stacks
• tons of condition removals

Maybe it’s just me, but that sounds a bit silly, huh? You list the things a Thief gets from just speccing into SA, and compare that to what an Elementalist gets from his ENTIRE BUILD (multiple traitlines, sigils, runes & utility skills)? Loving the Thief forums, lol. You guys always find a way to twist things around, don’t ya?

(ironically, just like ingame I might add; losing a fight badly? oh np, I’ll just press that button and it’s k – that’s a nice twist as well, heh)

mako.2431:

No class should be able to attack, stealth when you attack them back, heal and clease while stealthed, then come out of steath and reattack you, rinse, repeat until you are dead.

I have no problem with thieves having escapability, none at all. My problem is in and out of stealth fighting bullspit. Enough, peroid. I don’t know of any other game that allows such crap. They should hit like a truck, they should be able to sneak around, they should be able to poof and escape AFTER their kill or to get out of a tough fight….but they should not be able to repeatedly re-stealth in the middle of a fight to heal and cleanse over and over, it is absolutely absurd.

/rant off….let the flaming begin

While I completely agree with all that, it’s better to just save yourself all that hassle of typing it out ‘n stuff, pretty much a waste of time. Feedback on the horrible design of the Thief in GW2 has been a thing on these boards, especially the WvW section, for many a time but ANet just doesn’t give a single kitten. Everbody knows a class being able to repeatedly reset a fight by stealthing out at will in a game that features no counterplay to stealth (I do not consider swinging my weapons at air where I assume or guess an enemy to be valid counterplay) is literally breaking said game, but since stealth isn’t much of a problem in sPvP as it prevents you from capping/contesting, ANet doesn’t feel the slightest of urges to fix it.

Our last hope on that matter really is HoT and the Stronghold gamemode; if that mode gets popular, and the stealth issues from WvW carry over to it, maybe then ANet will finally decide to get their act together and rework those stealth mechanics.

Devildoc.6721:

makku.2508:

Devildoc.6721:

FrownyClown.8402:

then why come on the forums and complain about it?

Because the class needs “elite” skills that are actually worthy of the slot. Currently there aren’t really any. There’s 2 skills that should be utilites not elites, and 1 skill that is a complete joke.

If you’re implying FGS should be a utility skill, please don’t give them ideas. Unless they also give us an option to use utility skills in the elite slot, that is. I’d rather “waste” my elite slot for the get-out-alive emergency mobility skill instead of sacrificing a cantrip for it.

FGS is not a good enough skill to warrant its cooldown and elite slot anymore.

Ironically, FGS taking up the elite slot is one of its big plusses, and quite possibly the only reason it’s actually getting used. Cantrips are our strongest utility skills by far (excluding PvE here, don’t have much of an idea about that, heard Lightning Hammer is a thing there?), and you’d usually take any of ‘em over FGS any day. So with FGS being elite, you can run that and still have 3 cantrips on your bar. If they’d make FGS a utility skill, they’d pretty much kill it (for PvP/WvW).

Devildoc.6721:

FrownyClown.8402:

then why come on the forums and complain about it?

Because the class needs “elite” skills that are actually worthy of the slot. Currently there aren’t really any. There’s 2 skills that should be utilites not elites, and 1 skill that is a complete joke.

If you’re implying FGS should be a utility skill, please don’t give them ideas. Unless they also give us an option to use utility skills in the elite slot, that is. I’d rather “waste” my elite slot for the get-out-alive emergency mobility skill instead of sacrificing a cantrip for it.

You can run almost anything on D/D, it’s pretty much entirely up to what you feel comfortable with.

For starters, I’d even say go for full Soldier’s maybe for getting started with the playstyle (a tanky D/D is way less fun but much for forgiving).

After that, you’ll probably start aiming for certain stat thresholds you wanna reach, like 1800-1900 power, 30% crit chance, 2500 armor, 180% crit dmg, 17k HP etc., in which case combinations of valk, knight, cavalier & soldier, maybe some cele trinkets (they’re purchasable with laurels + badges, no need to craft or grind PvE) and meta runes (strength/hoelbrak/pack) usually do a good job.

As time moves on you might occasionally feel the urge to change things up a little, and that usually involves sacrificing some tankiness for higher dmg as you get more confortable with the class.

Then you either settle with that, or you’re like me and at some point in time get fed up with all that meta & might stacking BS and end up trying your blobstaffbuild armor + trinkets just for the lolz, realising how much more satisfying that is and never going back. That’s why I now run knight daggers, soldier armor & zerker trinkets with ogre runes and air+fire sigils, which originally was my low-budget staff build (‘cept for air sigil which is an energy sigil on staff) and then became my go-to build for D/D roaming (0/2/2/4/6 traits setup). HP and toughness are a little low (15345/2350) but with enough experience one can handle that, and that 2124 raw power rating (unbuffed) is just glorious. I sacrified pretty much all condi cleanse from the water line (only relying on cleansing fire + water 5 and evasive arcana) so I usually don’t engage on anything that tends to pile up conditions on me if I don’t have to (if you have to, the simple strat is to just kill them before they kill you, huehue), but it (solo-)clears camps in a matter of seconds and I literally cannot remember the last time I lost to a thief, warrior or ranger (which are about the ones that can keep up with or surpass you in terms of mobility).

I honestly don’t think there’s a way to get rid off blobbing without overcoming technical limitations first. AFAIK ANet has stated current map size is about the max for WvW, and I don’t ever see blobbing end without a significant increase in mapsize. As it is now, there’s no reason to not just blob up since you can reach any objective on the map in like 2 minutes max, with porters even accross different borderlands including load times. Travel time between objectives needs a major increase (really only soveable with a increase in map size and/or some massive vertical shenanigans), map-hopping might have to be restricted so you cannot instantly transfer your 80 men blob of death to an empty map (though this doesn’t really help with highest tier WvW anyways as these servers have no problems filling multiple maps up to cap), and ‘small-scale objectives’ like camps and sentries actually need an incentive to be capped by small groups/solo roamers and not just be waltzed over by an entire army (but this is again mostly linked to map size and the current map design placing those small objectives between big ones, so it doesn’t hurt a blob to just cap them on their way to the next objective).

It’s just ANet staying true to their tradition, isn’ it? I’ve been playing this game since release and I don’t recall them ever doing anything other than

a) Identify problematic build
b) Nerf lots of stuff in that build except for the core problem, so other builds get hit even harder
c) Wonder why other builds disappear and everyone is forced into the problematic build even more
d) Use c) as an excuse to nerf even more stuff unrelated to the core problem

And, most important:
e) Don’t give a kitten about how you just completely screwed all those WvW players. Why even bother doing sPvP specific changes, not like anyone’s playing WvW anyways, right?