Guild Wars 2

I am editing this post because I figured out the trick, though I still believe the dev that created this achievement to be a sadist. You need to get 25 stacks of the debuff, then the hands will give alacrity instead, which makes this doable. Just stand by the door and afk until you have 25 stacks, then enter the fight.

Damage nerfs were small compared to other professions. Their damage is overtuned, as with mesmer. Have fun in season 6 getting zerged all game and not knowing what hit you.

Certain classes feel completely overturned post-patch. Thief in particular has some really broken poison application through abilities now, that can melt through the most bunker of bunker builds.
So remove passive sigils/traits, but put in game more passive brainless condition spam?

Developers should be ashamed of themselves.

answers in order:

Condi ele not viable.
Ele defense still decent.
Ele always best in a team fight.
Warhorn not viable.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQNAS5enMdAVhgtkCehAElilqATpHE7yBIFgGQA4d02antA-TpRAQBg4CAAgDCQHOCAf4BAEw9HqYZAA

Switch out surging with leadership rune if you need more condi clear.

Guide: Make sure you go into options and have your lock ground target to current target checked and ground targeting set to instant. Have fun.

Really disappointed shatterstone was not buffed. Okay, that was sarcasm, now for the real feedback. Pumping damage into skills the ele actually uses was a nice little buff. Not anything anyone will be complaining about either. I still think there are two quality of life changes that could make ele more enjoyable without breaking it, which are the following:

1) Invigorating Torrents vs Harmonious Conduit. Conduit has the stability on overloads, whilst Torrents has regen and synergy with condition removal. Eles are pretty much forced to take Torrents; therefore, forced to constantly worry about positioning when overloading (minus earth). The risk it too high for the reward.

Solution: remove stability on overloads from Harmonious Conduit and place it into a minor trait, essentially making it baseline. Forcing other professions to waste 2 CC’s on an overloading ele they want to stop is not game breaking, and would allow the ele to play a little more reckless.

2) You buff D/D set every balance patch or so by a small amount. It would be fun to play D/D again, as I am sure many base eles want to. I believe the issue is with Ride the Lightning. It was constantly nerfed when celestial D/D was meta, but now many classes have low CD gap closers.

Solution: revert Ride the Lightning to a its original form or greatly reduce the CD. Remove the CD difference on a RTL hit vs a miss. That level of skill ceiling is no longer required in HOT. Probably would not make it meta, but would certainly make it fun.

That is all I got for elementalist. There were some nice changes in this patch across the board. Best change IMO was the removal of downed player invulnerability. Makes the game feel more fluid.

Class balancing has been going downhill since HOT.

Constructive feedback: Devs should seriously consider undoing many of the pre-HOT nerfs to standard builds in an attempt to bring back diversity. They started to do it with mesmer GS #2 skill.

I cheered when Trahearne finally bit the dust, because he was ruining the story for far too long. Lets all be honest, only one that would pull at our heart strings, is Taimi. Arenanet wouldn’t dare touch her adorable Asuran head though, right?

This season is not fun at all. Garbage balance combined with sorry matchmaking system. The fact that my friends list is void and 6 minute queue times in sapphire says it all.

There will not be any build variety for ele in the near future. ANET as shown they are completely incompetent with that in this HOT era. Better luck next xpac.

ANET have no idea what they are doing at this point. They expect ele to be magically viable without toughness and healing power? Should give ele a trait that lets them stealth and gain superspeed after an overload, since good luck fighting burst builds now.

Or holding a point.
Or getting any overloads off.
Or relying on a team now screwed by new matchmaking system.

This season is complete kitten . I thought GW2 had a much better ranked system than Overwatch, but now it has completely flip flopped. I worked my way up the MMR soloq, so I would not have to play with baddies. Not to mention balance team is failing every step of the way. Been playing GW2 since release, but now I think it is time to leave this scene.

Got to x7 legend last season, but so far:
This seasons matchmaking…literally trash
This seasons queue times in sapphire…trash
Trying to find a viable elementalist build in a kitten meta…beyond trash
Going back to Overwatch now, k, thanks, bye.

After deletion of the celestial amulet I was happy to see ele still viable, but what we are left with is a stale healbot. The closest thing I can think of to the ele meta is pre-hot shoutbow warrior, but shoutbow did not run around announcing its damage attack for 4 seconds. 4 seconds in which you will get interrupted by everything and its pet. An attack, that if it lands, does unimpressive damage in the current meta.
If two eles happen to meet in fierce combat, the winner is the one whom stays awake. Honestly, I cannot think of another mmo with a magic class that does not have a burst type spec that is viable, but I guess someone has to cleanse the flood of conditions HOT has brought upon us.

PSA: When you make balance changes don’t just try and make things viable. Think about the fun factor. It is what keeps people playing the professions that they enjoy.

WoW pvp was fun at one point. Did the arenas up to the highest level. 5v5 was a literal zergfest. 2v2 had its moments, while 3v3 could be fun, but not nearly as action oriented as gw2. Not to mention how utterly skilless melee are in wow, they basically blow their cool downs and profit.
Wow is easier, because certain classes hard counter others regardless of build. GW2 more fun and not as noob friendly (try Dragonhunter).

I can confirm it does not work at all. No matter what one does with the healing skill the bonus will not proc. Other 6th bonuses work with Medic Gyro, so it must be something to do with Herald runes themselves, and the way they detect a heal skill.
Pretty huge bug imo in pvp, because runes are the only diversity in engi builds atm.

96% win ratio and currently on a 30 game win streak. Did not lose a single match throughout Ruby. Yes, I love this season.

Runes of Herald’s 6th bonus, “When you use a heal skill, apply protection to nearby allies (360 range),” does not work with Medic Gyro. Will not proc when you use it initially nor when you detonate the gyro.

If you do not have HOT and expect to win in pvp, then you should at least go vanilla condi necro. I would love to play d/d ele or rifle engi again (rifle engi probably being more viable for the two), but if you do not support Anet by purchasing their xpac, then why should they support you by making everything viable?
It would be a daunting task to make vanilla specs equal to elite specs. If they tried, what you would get is a combo between some elite specs and vanilla specs being meta. It is easier and makes more sense to balance around the new and fresh trait lines, plus it gives more incentive to purchasing HOT.

I would not want to see a pvp season where trapper Dragonhunter was a must have on pro teams. Viable in Ranked for sure, but they have a low skill ceiling, and heavily countered by reflects.
Every profession can now q ranked and not feel like they are bringing down their team. That is progress.

The only reason you were doing pvp was for the backpack? Do it for the competition and hear the lament of your enemies of course! You can make yourself a fancy llama, plus you still get a title for Legendary. Save a portion of your materials for the next incentive item.

Remember that each game you play you are not alone, if I am bad we shouldn’t loose 120 to 500 every match. The point is with the matchmaker to make more even matches but does that happen? Well not for me, am I bad? No not that bad. Am I good? No not that good, but I know the matches I play I am paired with players who actually are worse than me.[/quote]

I feel your pain. For a while I was getting completely stuck in season 2. You may be better than your teammates, but if you keep losing with said teammates, then your matchmaking will not improve.

With that team composition you really should have won. Engi stack would have been hell last season, but post nerf they can be dealt with.
As far as Overwatch is concerned it is a completely different game, and if Blizzard is behind it, you better believe players will find a way to break the game play.

sanctuary.1068:

Some matches are better, some are worse. I mean, i had a match yday where i killed a thief & necro simtaniously on far solo. Cant rly say that match is balanced then. This was in sapphire even. Shows some matches are decided already who to win beforehand even if theyre close.

That is always the danger of playing thief. He tried to +1 you and got caught. Thief did not really get any buffs this patch as far as defense is concerned.

I agree that matchmaking is infinitely times better than last seasons. Last season I would win, win, win, then get farmed by pro league players. Worse than that, I would lose, and get paired with those same players game after game. This season I actually get pro players on my team as well. A lot of fun playing with the guys I watch on twitch and can 100% rely on and not just get farmed by. Even when they aren’t pros, the players I get are really good, or at least I feel they are on my level or better.

These are great changes to 2 very broken skills. I previously thought Moa Morph should be ~5 seconds in pvp and One Shot (surge) of the Mists is exactly that. Great pre-season changes.

Most players use renewal/x. Renewal is a guaranteed heal for you and allies in a small radius around you when you swap attunements. Leeching is a great heal and does equivalent damage, but remember it can miss and be wasted. Transference would be a solid choice over leeching, but I would not take out renewal.

Should getting gold on fallen masks really be harder than World 2 Zone 3 tribulation mode, or most bosses on Dark Souls 3? There is no way to memorize these points and hit them fast enough. From the one video I saw the guy literally had to master the art of falling and gliding at the last second to avoid fall damage to get gold. Ridiculous.

Shooting gallery is another one, but mainly because of the lack of time you have to practice. I wouldn’t mind these two still being so hard if it was not for the mastery points locked behind them.

Scepter is fun to play around with, but to be honest, ele should never run scepter in serious pvp scenarios. Support is just too good right now. They did not nerf ele support build for a reason, it is meta, and they want to keep it that way.

Devs need to give ele a proper damage spec for pvp, which could either be D/D back, or a proper scepter buff instead of these jokes they have been giving it. Then, and only then, you can talk about nerfing our boring (and only viable) support build.

I have already hit legend, but matchmaking is still complete trash. You get matched with the same team/party of people over and over into a tiltfest. Not very fun game play design IMO.

I like this decision. Lets get interesting and fun content out rather than focus on legendary weapons that only a handful of players will grind to get. I like legendary weapons, but I like the thought of content even more. I am also a pvp focused player, so there is that.

Staff is fine. With staff you gain more healing potential/control, but lose the invuln, so you won’t have a safe stomp or res. Make sure you combo earth #2 with water #4 for AOE frost aura, or with your water heal fields.

Focus the necro into the ground. 1v1 you want to cleanse yourself whilst staying offensive and avoiding reaper shroud freeze.

Mender amulet if enemy team has condi for damage roles. Power rev/thief will destroy you without Cleric’s ammy.

Played tempest to legendary and it is extremely boring. It’s incredibly lame having to choose between stability for overloads or cleanse/vigor. This is what happens when they take away celestial amulet and bring on a condi meta.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Ithilwen.1529:

@ Evan Lesh

You are confusing elite with prestigious. The elite in this case being formed by pre made team groupies who are willing to stack specific classes and builds.

You are correct. Though I am curious to know what is bad about pre-made teams that perform well reaching the top of the ladder. When I play with friends, we perform no better than solos :P

Finally, proof the devs are bad at their own game. I knew it for so long

Solo Q with this new matchmaking is nothing short of AIDS. 90% of my games are determined before the match even starts. I think Arenanet needs some better mathematicians on their team to help them with these garbage algorithms.

Moa should be reduced to AT LEAST 5 seconds in pvp. That way they can only double moa 2 targets for a full 10 second duration. Enough with the elite iwin buttons.

This is seriously God awful. Last season in ruby I at least had competent players that knew what they were doing and would switch professions if enemy team was unfavorable to their current. This season I am getting nothing but scrubs, and when I lose with said scrubs, I get more scrubs or the same kitten scrubs! I am pretty big into pvp, but this type of downward spiral gaming will even make me quit.

Ranked has basically turned into hotjoin. You know, when the “know how” players stack on the first good player that joins, so the other team gets stuck with noobs getting stomped. At Ruby rank I am constantly having this dirty little cheat system completely stack the cards against me. Huge fail ANET. Please l2math.

I am ruby and playing alts for fun, yet get stuck facing Wakky/Sonfish duo q a total of 4 times. One of those times they had Ostrich Eggs as well. My team has players that still go beast before keep. More than that the profession stack between teams make no sense. This new system is catering to the pros and letting them steamroll solo q.

Whatever algorithm you are using now is as bad or worse than last season. The profession stacking and ridiculously unbalanced teams by skill is terrible so far.

Tempest is already an endangered species in proleague NOW. After this patch they could be unplayable. After another 3 months ANET will auto-equip each ele with a celestial amulet upon entering HOTM, which cannot be removed, or used by any other profession.

Forgotten Legend.9281:

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Conncept.7638:

Or, maybe, since we won’t be able to have all three defensive stats simultaneously anymore, they will finally give the ele the reasonable defensive baseline it has needed since launch to ever have more than one build.

Yes, but they’re not doing that. All we get is a Shatterstone buff and a bad diamond skin rework. Remember, 100% of the time when Anet “previewed” balance changes, those were 100% of the changes.

except that the previous balance patches took 6 hours to “preview” on Rubi’s livestream. they specifically mentioned in this livestream that they were not going to talk about all the changes because it would take way too long, and they wanted to keep the show down to an hour. so they pretty much previewed a change or two in each of the four categories they listed in their blog earlier in the week. that blog specifically mentioned plural changes to each category.

while this balance patch might not be as big a change as the specialization changes, there’s no way it’s as small as they previewed. i think the better word would have been “teaser” than “preview.”

but i’ll freely admit that i’m bacon deficient at this hour, and could very easily be asleep in left field without realizing it. (in other words, i could be way wrong about my prediction, too)

PS: maybe they need to shake things up like this, too: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/King-of-fires-suggestion/first#post5928814

/shrug

They have mentioned buffs to focus prior, but did not say anything on the live stream. Buffs to focus could be really nice seeing as how much utility it currently brings.

Crinn.7864:

Can we at least wait until the patch actually drops before claiming a class as dead.

If we wait until the patch drops to alert stupidity, then we will have to complain for at least another 3 months to get a fix (probably more silly scepter “buffs”).

Teams may still require tempest for condi removal. Remember, Tempest is basically the new and improved version of Shoutbow. With the new amulets you will die faster, but our lightning aoe will do more damage.

I can see potential builds for the Tempest after Jan 26th, but what I DON’T see is a replacement for celestial amulet. The jack of all trades profession losing its jack of all trades amulet.

GG Anet.

P.S. shatterstone change was asinine.

Tempest could handle the DS change, but removing Cele amulet?

Before our next balance update. Time to rank the professions.

1) God/Chronobunker – No bunker profession is as strong atm. Their ability to AOE heal, cleanse conditions, power res, and guard points from a distance (portal) make them a league above everyone else. Definitely the profession you should have played if soloing to Legendary.

2) Revenant – Best dps profession in the game. They can tear apart most professions, while surviving focus fire themselves. They are what you want with you when going after a Tempest or Druid bunking.

3) Tempest/Druid – Both can aoe heal and cleanse conditions. Druid can power rez with pet trait, but what really makes them obnoxious is their ability to daze. If you stick them both on point next to each other the druid can lock the Tempest out of most overloads. Tempest does not rely on AI pet for damage or self sustain.

4) Scrapper – Great utility, on point damage, and self sustain.

5) Reaper – Probably the best dps after Rev. Their reaper form cleave packs a punch, but they still have the same issues they did pre-HOT. Out of reaper form they are sitting ducks to focus fire.

6) Dragonhunter – The traps are heavily hated, but they are a one trick pony profession. They drop traps, shoot at range, and hope things die. Once their cooldowns are used up they are pretty easy to kill. Longbow 3 and 4 are kind of clunky.

7) Thief – Die too fast in the current meta. Have seen some amazing things out of thief, but the skillcap is just ridiculously high to play these guys effectively. They can still +1 and push for fast decaps, but once you catch them, poof!

8) Warrior – Do NOT bring a warrior into ranked. The days of hambow and shoutbow are long gone. They bring absolutely nothing to the team.