Guild Wars 2

I bought HOTS, but I kind of regret it. I logged in BWE1 and played around with Tempest for about 20 minutes and it didn’t make be feel like it would hold my interest for long.

I feel like the new elite specs will become a novelty a month after HOTS is released. I’ll play them try them it will probably take me a week to feel pretty confident with them and then I will get bored again.

The new trait system I like, but what I don’t like is that they tied the elite specs weapons to also taking a trait line. I always enjoyed trying different trait setups and experimenting. With the new elite specs you have to run a specific trait line to have access to the weapon. I would prefer if they had just added the new trait lines and new utilities as usual.

I guess it is suppose to give you a sense of being powerful or something, but none of the elite specs feel elite. It’s like if at release warrior only had a GS and in order to run Hammer he has to pick a trait line he can’t even try to kitten his cooldowns for more damage if he wanted to because he has to pick Defense.

My other gripe is that it seems that a lot of the animations are reused assets. For an expansion I was expecting more new animations.

Revenant will probably be what I’ll end up playing the most just because it’s all new traits to mess around with.

Every balance change since the beginning of time is numbers even if it’s dressed up as a QOL. I see people saying change shouts or elite which will still be numbers. It’s either going to do more damage=numbers, longer condition duraition=numbers, last longer=numbers etc…

The number one problem I saw in the feedback thread was nobody found a reason to use overloads at all if ever so they seemed to be dismissed in most of the feedback. They boosted them which would be the place to start. The elite still needs to be touched, but I don’t see that being a big problem.

By boosting them as they posted here then it’s either going to be worth it to trade damage by overloading or it’s not. No trait is going to really change that unless they give us invincibility during overload which won’t happen so this is a start; even 50 stacks of stability during overload won’t make it worth it based on their previous iteration since we would still take damage.

This is a decent start

@conncept nailed it. I just can’t see how anyone that ever played D/D Ele for more than a year would call for a sustain nerf. They did that anyone that wanted to play ele had to run S/D gimmick burst build.

I don’t think there will be any major nerfs tbh. I think they will want to see how it performs in stronghold and if that game mode becomes popular. In stronghold what is “OP” has probably changed from traditional meta because thieves can do stuff like run supply while stealth which matters for actually winning the game and not 1v1’s.

I just don’t see a reason to nerf D/D, but I agree burning is to strong. How else are we doing damage besides lightning whip? So nerfing burning will nerf us and every other class that has any aspect of burning across the board.

I read the OP’s suggestions don’t agree with any of it.

Traits are kind of boring overall it’s different. I think this is how it will play out when HoTs launches.

Seasoned Ele players in WvW and sPvP will play it learn it in about a hour or two if it takes that long. May use it for a week and then be really bored with it.

I think it has a place even in it’s current state and is a slight switch in playstyle, but I think it’s just going to lose novelty fast.

I’ll probably be playing Revenant a lot it’s a lot of fun I haven’t seen great dps from it yet, but so far I am finding it a lot of fun it has complexity to it, which is what drew me to elementalist and engineer as my 1 and 2 respectively.

Phantaram is playing right now

we can get a couple hours early look or those that won’t get to play can see.

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2

Anyone else looking forward to messing with Tempest this weekend? It will be good to get my hands on it and give a honest opinion at it’s current state. I’m going to run through that little PvE intro and go straight to WvW roaming.

Ironbars.9123:

Couple more questions.

What is a good gear combination to go with as I slowly get enough crystals for celestial gear? Knights/Zerk 50/50?

Also can you convert your exotic gear into ascended gear down the road, or do you need to craft the ascended gear from scratch?

You need some soldier in there or you will be running around with 12k hp which is like a cloak and dagger backstab or one mirror blade shatter. Everyone hits harder now so you want to shoot for 16-18k hp I prefer 17k hp since every does more damage now you should run around with a little more vitality and toughness than what you would have before.

FrownyClown.8402:

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

FrownyClown.8402:

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Videos like this is why real PVPers look down on WVWers. Those enemies behaved more like mobs than thinking players to be honest.

Oh its no doubt that the players were not that great, but his ability to reset fights and survive is pretty skillful play. I’m not bashing the pvper’s but cele is easier to play than the build he was using.

But he was using cele? Changing fire for air doesn’t make it a new build really…

You also have to look at fighting on point vs fighting in wvw. He doesn’t have time to sit in one spot and stack might. He is playing with no more than 10 stacks of might his entire video. Players in general have more power in wvw as well so its harder to tank. Almost no one solo roams on d/d ele these days simply because its harder to survive than in pvp.

Yea Dolo roaming is rough, but group is still good but strictly solo is difficult because a mesmer can KO so quickly if you are fighting a warrior or guard in what would be a longer sustained fight not to mention trying to reset or heal up with a zerk ranger pew pewing you. Disengages have to happen a lot sooner than before.

People said the same thing when the celestial amulet changed and strength runes changed. I didn’t play for a whole year but before I left that was the thing. Not sure were the OP gets 2 years ago. That would be when Ele was called UP. Since celestial changes about a year or so ago Ele has been doing pretty well.

I would say actually I was surprised Phanta said he thought warhorn was going to be good and said he thinks it could be possible that it’s OP. The second part is usually inline with what I usually see him say which is something on Ele should be nerfed. So he is endorsing Tempest and Warhorn, but shouts aren’t going to be taken over Cantrips which I agree with at most the Air One will be used. It really is hard to give up Cantrips because they are so good.

Notsoperky.4291:

I loved the comment about moa from stealth, coming from the cheese d/d ele that’s priceless- permanent 5-6 buffs including might, vigor, regen, blasts etc and you moan about one skill that lets you run away…

Never been a fan of the spam skills and blast twitch d/d ele style, but you play it well. Did that mes ever switch weapons? Or those other enemies?

I’m sure if I recorded every fight I have I could pick out some really good ones too- and some really bad.

Problem is, your video shows why d/d ele needs a nerf. Too much easy access to buffs and heals.

Seriously? PU Mesmer gets access to those boons on top of aegis pretty much permanently. Roaming the other day my friend could copy 3 minutes of swiftness to the group all on his own regularly. Metaphysical defense and restorative illusions give you pretty much permanent prot on a Mesmer

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Videos like this is why real PVPers look down on WVWers. Those enemies behaved more like mobs than thinking players to be honest.

I don’t think that is the case for the majority if you actually talk to them and not go by rants. At least for top NA players anyway many of them were in my guild or still are as a side guild or friends of people in our guild and are in our TS often like Chaith or Phanta. I’ve never heard them say “Bro WvW’s players are beneath us”. Or anything resembling that.

There are plenty of montages of people hot joining doing work on lesser skilled players.

According to the patch notes it’s removed like it was suppose to be. Ferocious winds is also fixed to convert precision instead of toughness.

I can’t test computer being fixed in preparation for windows 10 tomorrow.

I went in to see what my stats would look like with soldier runes and it was ok without changing to much I could get 2900 armor and 18.3k HP, still over 2100 power, 30% crit chance, and 200 critical damage (WvW calculator). Healing went down significantly to about 124 healing power in order to keep my power over 2100 but then fury access?

So you will need Air for sure for fury or fire or both to have respectable dps. The -40% damage reduction from protection is pretty significant though. Maybe abusing protection is the way I mean we already do, for some of the popular builds, but it would be even more important here.

Tempest needs some way to grant fury or an arcane equivalent.

I do see that you can get every boon that you would get from the elemental attunement trait on the warhorn, but those skills are kind of long cd’s just to get those boons themselves. If they want people feel better about trying tempest without Arcana then they have to give the tempest line fury, or some precision modifier somewhere.

It’s not going to be a 50/50 ratio here ever with a standard D/D Ele build because it is designed to crush boon spammers which ele,engi, and guard are at the top of that list and consequently signet necro counters all of them. Engi has the best chance here if they run a high burst build because that build would also have good CC so it can eat through DS at range.

You could put on a focus and try that, but it will end up being a longer fight, the Necro is favorited here if he is at least decent.

I brought this build up before I was running it not to long after the patch dropped on my Necro. People kept saying the Ele is to OP yada yada and I never had a problem with them on my Necro running this build and stability → fear conversion was bugged then. It isn’t now so the fight is even more in the Necro’s favor. I think some of the life steal traits are still bugged too so it will get even better in this particular matchup.

So I have had some time to mull this over today. The main issues I think that should be looked at again based on the stream are as follows..

Cantrips vs Shouts- Shouts need a trait or additional functionality before people will even consider taking more than one shout and even then they probably took it just because and not because it fit’s best. The Air and Earth shout are imo the best ones. One of the shouts needs stability on it or maybe some invuln.

I fear what will happen is shouts will suffer from the same fate as arcana utilities in that they are seen as 1 trick ponies outside of the shield that doesn’t beat mist form. We like good defensive utilities, but since they are mean to be offensive put some kind of immunity or stability on 1 or 2 of the shouts. Heck all of them for all I care because..

Overcharges will get interrupted see churning earth that’s kind of the feeling I think many of us have. It does do something during the channel phase so I see the consideration there, but it is always going to feel to risky to attempt them.

warhorn skills I think they are ok the earth one looks silly though riding on a rock just looks weird to me. If it was something like the reverse of the revenant where a road comes up or bricks around you as you move that would be better.

Malchior.5732:

Kidel.2057:

Laraley.7695:

That trait should just go.

I see absolutely no reason for ele to have AoE strunbreak.

Ele will also have a shout with aoe stunbreak + superspeed

On a 45 second CD.
If it provided something other than Super Speed + Stun Break it’d be fine, but that’s it? I think Air Signet would be a wiser choice then.

I don’t know about that superspeed is pretty good in combat it just seems lackluster out of it.

Lightsbane.9012:

has anyone been able to find the related Point of Interest episode?

dulfy has it up on her youtube page

Kodiak.3281:

People seem to forget that stunbreaks aren’t as useful as they seem. They clear things happening after they already happened. Typically speaking by the time you get to them, the effects are either over or close to being over as much of this game’s CCs are all only 1-2 seconds in duration by design with very few exceptions.

So even if Imbued Melodies’ effect occurs on self, it’s still never going to be as useful as Lightning Flash which repositions you, Mist Form which prevents damage and that effect, or Armor of Earth which provides a massive stack of Stability for you to either preemptively eat (IE: cast before) or recover (IE: cast after) and keep going. The fact you can trait all these and include Vigor/Regen and have Regen clear Conditions on top of that is just ridiculously crazy compared to any condition based shout effect.

I’ve never really heard anyone say stun breaks aren’t that useful. If you multi-class thieves don’t get access to invulns or blocks, but evades and blinds. Necromancer we know about that one and since foot in the grave to changed to break stun it is the go to trait for any PvP/WvW necromancer build without question.

Still if you have the chance to take an invuln or block you almost certainly take them since they usually double as stun breakers too. That’s why at most I see in PvP/WvW most people taking 2 cantrips and 1 shout.

They need to put stab on 1 shout and another stun breaker just to make them compete with cantrips also a cooldown reduction trait merged with one of the existing tempest traits also.

Just moving my longer in-depth post if this is going to be “the thread” post video.

PvP/WvW(solo/small group roam)

I need to look at the skills again I missed Air the livestream seemed to start all over the place.

Some general impressions
The damage on overloads was decent even if it is still a channel it’s still doing something like damage while it’s channeling. I see a lot of good dodge baiter skills in air and fire. I really didn’t see any skill I would want to eat and ignore like say flame wall.
Fire 4 is meh I’d use it as filler I see the group utility it provides though, but it should be a blast finisher too.

Fire 5 removes a boon the description says 1 so my guess is 1 per pulse? Which is pretty good. With a 2 second base burn is also pretty good.

Shouts vs Cantrips will come down to if the GM trait Imbued Melodies trait also applies to self(they didn’t specify in the stream) and you can break stun with warhorn skills on a 10 second ICD if it does then I can possibly see the following…

Arcane Shield, Mist, Form, or Armor of Earth because blocks, stability, or invulns are hard to pass up on the utility bar so it’s good to have at least 1 oh crap button.
Lightning flash will still be needed from what I see for me personally for positioning, so that leaves one shout.

You could do double Call of the storm if you take the adept trait Gale Song which gives you the shout Call of the Storm when stunned so running the trait and the utility would be extra insurance.

Shock and Aftershock shout gives you Magnetic Aura for 4sec, a 6 sec base cripple, and 2 second based immoblize, blast finisher, and travels 360 degress from 0-600 range rather quickly and is a blast finisher. Going by the tooltip pic from Dulfy the damage was (2x)888, but I’m not sure what Amulet Karl or buffs had on when he casted it so I’ll have to look at the video again.

I would take shock and aftershock and run the Gale Song trait to start testing with lighting flash and Armor of earth. I would still run Signet Heal though and FGS.
I’d swap tho probably 1 more shout if I am small group coordinated roaming in WvW and just have lightning flash on my bar.

Theorycrafting trait setup – I have no idea…
no water? means no condi removal, you could try to warrior/guardian it with soldier runes, but I don’t see that with offensive shouts. They will give you a nice accumulation of vitality and toughness allowing you to run more zerk/cav/knights/celestial or whatever you mix for damage, but you have to have a stab so armor of earth. I can’t see going full 3 slot shouts in any scenario right now.

Maybe you could get by without Arcana and Tempest all the warhorn skills give you the same boons you get from elemental attunement, but more is usually better when it comes to boons, but maybe Arcana isn’t needed, but blast fields are only coming from overloads or 2 shouts and I think people will want to blast Warhorn Water 5 repeatedly.

I’ll have to play with the traits and see if I feel I’m missing something that D/D has survivability/damage wise that I can compensate with through gear. To me I can’t really compare it to x/D it’s more in competition with x/F and it looks much better than x/F and offers something different than running x/D. x/D as it stands now is still good in it’s own way they don’t really compare.

I need to look at the skills again I missed Air the livestream seemed to start all over the place.

The damage on overloads was decent even if it is still a channel it’s still doing something like damage while it’s channeling. I see a lot of good dodge baiter skills in air and fire. I really didn’t see any skill I would want to eat and ignore like say flame wall.

Fire 4 is meh I’d use it as filler I see the group utility it provides though
Fire 5 removes a boon the description says 1 so my guess is 1 per pulse? Which is pretty good. With a 2 second base burn is also pretty good.

The kicker I see for shouts vs cantrips is the GM trait Imbued Melodies if that trait also applies to self(they didn’t specify in the stream) and you can break stun with warhorn skills on a 10 second ICD I can possibly see the following…

Arcane Shield, Mist, Form, or Armor of Earth because blocks, stability, or invulns are hard to pass up on the utility bar so it’s good to have at least 1 oh crap button.

Lightning flash will still be needed from what I see for me personally for positioning, so that leaves one shout.

You could do double Call of the storm if you take the adept trait Gale Song which gives you the shout Call of the Storm when stunned so running the trait and the utility would be extra insurance.

Shock and Aftershock shout gives you Magnetic Aura for 4sec, a 6 sec base cripple, and 2 second based immoblize, blast finisher, and travels 360 degress from 0-600 range rather quickly and is a blast finisher. Going by the tooltip pic from Dulfy the damage was (2x)888, but I’m not sure what Amulet Karl or buffs had on when he casted it so I’ll have to look at the video again.

I would take shock and aftershock and run the Gale Song trait to start testing with lighting flash and Armor of earth. I would still run Signet Heal though and FGS.

I’d swap tho probably 1 more shout if I am small group coordinated roaming in WvW and just have lightning flash on my bar.

Theorycrafting trait setup – I have no idea…

no water? means no condi removal, you could try to warrior/guardian it with soldier runes, but I don’t see that with offensive shouts. They will give you a nice accumulation of vitality and toughness allowing you to run more zerk/cav/knights/celestial or whatever you mix for damage, but you have to have a stab so armor of earth. I can’t see going full 3 slot shouts in any scenario right now.

Maybe you could get by without Arcana and Tempest all the warhorn skills give you the same boons you get from elemental attunement, but more is usually better when it comes to boons, but maybe Arcana isn’t needed, but blast fields are only coming from overloads or 2 shouts and I think people will want to blast Warhorn Water 5 repeatedly.

I’ll have to play with the traits and see if I feel I’m missing something that D/D has survivability/damage wise that I can compensate with through gear. To me I can’t really compare it to x/D it’s more in competition with x/F and it looks much better than x/F and offers something different than running x/D. x/D as it stands now is still good in it’s own way they don’t really compare.

rotten.9753:

oZii.2864:

Hmm maybe I am missing something, but to me it looks like a much better focus.

The overcharge doesn’t look mandatory the trait is, but you aren’t forced to overload the attunement you have 5 seconds to get off what you need to in an attunement and switch if not then you will overload.

The biggest downside I saw was if you do get stunned in an attunement then you could overload if you didn’t want to, so your choices are to swap while stunned which has the down side of putting that attunement on the normal cooldown or to use a stun break, which if that GM trait applies to you then you can break stuns with regular warhorn skills.

Other than that my first impression is that it’s a much better focus.

Paying attention to karls damage with Carrion on against Svanir or Golems he was criting for 1k-1.2k on just about every skill that had a damage component except the Air 5 which didn’t seem that bad when he used it on Svanir he put 20 stacks of Vuln on him.

Is it pvp you are talking about?

Yea strictly PvP/WvW I should have clarified I don’t PvE much at all except if I am making a legendary or bored.

Oh I did miss that the Elite is real weak that is definitely a thumbs down for me. I’ll stick with FGS in WvW based on what I saw with that Elite and Signet heal.

FrownyClown.8402:

based on the ready up, tempest is bad.

Hmm maybe I am missing something, but to me it looks like a much better focus.

The overcharge doesn’t look mandatory the trait is, but you aren’t forced to overload the attunement you have 5 seconds to get off what you need to in an attunement and switch if not then you will overload.

The biggest downside I saw was if you do get stunned in an attunement then you could overload if you didn’t want to, so your choices are to swap while stunned which has the down side of putting that attunement on the normal cooldown or to use a stun break, which if that GM trait applies to you then you can break stuns with regular warhorn skills.

Other than that my first impression is that it’s a much better focus.

Paying attention to karls damage with Carrion on against Svanir or Golems he was criting for 1k-1.2k on just about every skill that had a damage component except the Air 5 which didn’t seem that bad when he used it on Svanir he put 20 stacks of Vuln on him.

Shadowphazon.7529:

No invulnerability. No blocks. No evades. No movement skills. No teleports. But don’t worry you’ve got protection and a stunbreak on a 50 second cooldown!

The evade would be on your dagger with burning speed and it has a pulsing field blind. The GM trait gives break stun when you use a warhorn skill on a 10 sec cd, but they didn’t say if that applies to you also, but usually stuff like that does.

There is no way warhorn can be good.

inb4 ele OP

They always do this and I’m glad since their are always special snowflakes that think what their saying is so different than the 10 other threads on the same subject. Merging of threads happens all the time in other class forums back in the day there was a thief one that blows this or any other class forum thread out of the water.

From the other day we had “Why Tempest won’t be used in PvP” because interrupts(and like 4 other pointless words) which had already been brought up anyway by PlatinumMember.

“What do you think about tempest”(which would have reasons why people hate or like it in it obviously" but we still get a thread like…
“Why the Tempest Hate”

Azure.8670:

I’m laughing a little because im thinking of launch. No remember when everyone thought eles were horrendous and unplayable etc etkittenil daphoenix and his cleric dagger build came along.

I’m not saying tempest is a god send or isn’t but let’s see how it actually plays before anything else

LOL I find it funny for the same reasons we did a lot of damage, but we where so squishy with that low hp Ele was useless then the D/D Ele build came along with no balance patch needed and it was OP. II think we got some slight nerfs before it was discovered IIRC.

I think this is just how people cope, and just about everyone here that’s optimistic or pessimistic will watch the live stream, catch the notes, or watch the vods later. Either excited by the possibilities or happy to dismiss it. Just about all of us will play it anyway when HOTS releases.

PlatinumMember.5274:

oZii.2864:

http://www.tentonhammer.com/news/guild-wars-2/guild-wars-2-tempest-revealed

An exception to this is Earth attunement, in which you’re given a break-bar that will eat a few control-skills before you’re interrupted.

Eye of the Storm! – The tempest will call the storm down on nearby allies and himself, breaking stun on anyone affected while granting superspeed.

At least draw a reference on how the devs work instead of oh mantra of distraction

We also don’t know all the traits they could easily make a trait that grants 1 stack of stability for 3-5 seconds when you use a shout and make it a grandmaster.

We already have a trait that gives us stab every 8 sec if we want to attune to earth that often. Necro can get stab every 8-10 seconds.

It is entirely possible the tempest trait line will have something similar. You know how a mesmer gets no stab but can trait a gm trait and get it every 15 sec.

This is really a weak assumption

Jekkt.6045:

shoutwar ran banner for so long… key is positioning, use your brain and avoid getting interrupted. or use rock solid.

That stability requires you to take earth. So you are going to switch to earth get a 2 second stability so you can use a 2.75 to 5 second channeling, bloody brilliant. I cannot believe I failed to see the brilliance of that combination. I guess the class mechanic has been fixed, go home.

I feel like both of you two are not thinking at all.

Seriously read again. I said another trait in the tempest trait line that gives stability. I mentioned the rock solid trait, the necromancer trait, and the mesmer trait as a reference that it is possible we will get a stab trait in tempest.

If you took a little bit more time to read you could be better at being dismissive.

I mean I even bolded what Karl said about one of the tempest traits for earth overcharge that lets you not be affected by CC. There would be no reason to even take earth if you take that trait, but I’m the one not thinking?

http://www.tentonhammer.com/news/guild-wars-2/guild-wars-2-tempest-revealed

An exception to this is Earth attunement, in which you’re given a break-bar that will eat a few control-skills before you’re interrupted.

Eye of the Storm! – The tempest will call the storm down on nearby allies and himself, breaking stun on anyone affected while granting superspeed.

At least draw a reference on how the devs work instead of oh mantra of distraction

We also don’t know all the traits they could easily make a trait that grants 1 stack of stability for 3-5 seconds when you use a shout and make it a grandmaster.

We already have a trait that gives us stab every 8 sec if we want to attune to earth that often. Necro can get stab every 8-10 seconds.

It is entirely possible the tempest trait line will have something similar. You know how a mesmer gets no stab but can trait a gm trait and get it every 15 sec.

This is really a weak assumption

PlatinumMember.5274:

oZii.2864:

Hardy Conduit – Grants protection when the tempest begins to overload their attunement. This trait can also be bolstered by a specific major trait icalled Earthen Proxy. The effects of protection on you will be increased from 33% to 40% damage reduction.

Oh yea elemental attunement and contingency bolstered

inb4 “omg arcana mandatory”

Considering that arcane is already mandatory and will continue to be mandatory, your joke is terrible.

Was it a joke or prediction? It’s a prediction as I have said before this reveal today. I’m just foreshadowing the cries of the forums.

edit: arcana is not mandatory anymore this has been discussed a lot water most agree but not arcana.

Speedy Conduit – You gain 33% bonus movement speed when overloading an attunement. Similarly to Earthen Proxy, you can also enhance this trait by equipping the Lucid Singularity trait, which heals you every second and reduces the duration of incoming inhibiting conditions by 100%

inb4 “nerf ele sustain bro”

Hardy Conduit – Grants protection when the tempest begins to overload their attunement. This trait can also be bolstered by a specific major trait icalled Earthen Proxy. The effects of protection on you will be increased from 33% to 40% damage reduction.

Oh yea elemental attunement and contingency bolstered

inb4 “omg arcana mandatory”

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_the_Trooper

I can hear it now Ele’s condi removal is to good because shouts. Ele players who are fixated with self balance to appear unbiased will say “nerf ele sustain”

we are doomed

/sarcasm

There will be cries we are op after the livestream I’d bet all my gold on it

Nearlight hit each classes vocal majority right from what I can see. I main Ele and I’ve been a active forum poster except for the last year since I didn’t play.

I do think though that most of the time people complaining are just blowing smoke and will flip flop, and if they do they won’t admit their assertions were incorrect. Usually it’s a lot of absolutes about quitting, we are ruined, we suck, devs hate us, devs don’t understand us, etc… Then if something isn’t as bad as it seemed during the assumptions phase they go through then they just move on to the next thing they can assume. This is usually the same across all the class subforums.

Honestly many people have come and gone from the forums, and most people that still play and post don’t even notice if/when they left.

If you look at the class subforums the thread reads vs post disparity is rather large and it’s usually the same people posting multiple times. So you end up with something like 2500 reads and 44 posts.

Most of the absolutes are straight smoke and most of them aren’t going to “quit”.

As per usual a vacuum comparison. Revenants have resource management spam your 1 through 5 swap a weapon and spam your 1 through 5 and you WILL NOT be able to use your Utilities, Heal, or Elite because they have a resource cost. If you can’t see how that makes the revenant totally different I don’t know what to tell you just because they can “swap something” doesn’t make it comparable to Elementalist.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_revenant_skills
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Energy

I can’t say I’m hyped, but I’m reserved some. I honestly think when they do the livestream everyone will be saying “OMG Ele’s will be OP” it’s kind of a theme besides the dark days right after the RTL nerf.

Change Celestial Amulet? Ele = OP
Strength Rune Change? Ele OP
Recent Patch? Ele OP
Obviously we were OP before when you could Ether Renewal and Mist form pre-RTL nerf patch.

I don’t see this being any different outcome from the forum/reddit playerbase as it is usually the case. Knee-Jerk reactions are common on the forums and no one will really know until we start using it.

Revenant was gonna be the OP! until it wasn’t and that was solely based on the livestream then people got their hands on it and was then UP. Which should have been obvious since it was you know missing a whole trait line and one of it’s legendaries.

I wouldn’t be hyped or disappointed just watch the livestream and reserve any real judgement until we can play it. I’d give stronger points to pre-play opinions of people people like Black Beard and Zelynn and other long time theory crafters here on the forums as they usually give more weight to numbers and not feelings.

TL/DR make a true judgement until you can play it.

Another vacuum. Ok give us resource management like revenant do that our cantrips are unusable if we use to many skills.

Soldier/knights/cav/zerk

You can mix stats you just need a baseline of totals you want.

16-18k hp Glassy-Tank
2000+power
300-400 healing (debatable IMO)
30% critical chance pre-fury
Critical damage 180+

You can get these numbers give or take in certain areas with a mixed gear set that doesn’t include celestial.

Streaming is what you’re looking for YouTube content is pretty low and like Frowny said pretty much the same.

If you want to take it back old school look up Da Phoenix and Serane, and Intigo.

Phantaram still stream on Twitch and CMC too.

Even if you watch older videos nothing has really changed in how it plays before it was either effective or not.

History lesson for the “New elementalists”

The 4/30/2013 Patch or the infamous RTL Nerf patch.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-April-30-2013/first#post1943026

Elementalist

•Comet skill: Blast finisher now occurs at the comet’s location rather than at the elementalist’s location.
•Conjure Flame Axe skill: Updated the Flame Leap skill fact to display the proper burning duration.
•Rock Blade skill: Projectiles now correctly hit targets up to the intended 1200 range.
•Mist Form skill: Activation now locks heal, utility, and elite skills.
•Ride the Lightning skill: •Increased recharge increased 20 seconds to 40 seconds.
•Recharge is now halved if the player strikes a foe.
•Reduced the range to 1200 from the previous (hidden) 1550.

•Signet of Earth skill: Passive stat bonus increased by 100%.
•Signet of Fire skill: Passive stat bonus increased by 100%.
•Glyph of Elemental Power skill: Added a skill fact to indicate the percent chance.
•Signet of Restoration skill: Reduced the passive healing by 18% in PvP.
•Cleansing Water trait: Can now trigger only once every 5 seconds (only in PvP).
•Glyph of Storms skill: Increased duration of Lightning Storm by 50%, Ice Storm by 50%, Firestorm by 25%, and Sandstorm by 11%.
•Glyph of Lesser Elementals skill: Increased the health of summoned elementals by 33%.
•Glyph of Elementals skill: Increased the health of the summoned elementals by 33%.
•Conjure Fiery Greatsword skill: The Fiery Rush skill no longer consumes a warrior’s adrenaline pool.
•Swirling Winds skill: No longer destroys unblockable missiles.

Then go read any threads that happened after that from this forum and sPvP forums. It’s all about how bad the Elementalist is now.

I feel like that patch was greatly influenced by “top” sPvP players across the board and it was a horrible patch for elementalists anyway and Warrior was still horrible until it got it’s healing signet.

We have come a long way with balance in this game full circle. I think the Guardian is the only class that has ever been always considered balanced or not nerfed so bad that nobody wants it on a team.

I swear our forum is strange. DD Ele is not a class on its own. When you make a Ele the game doesn’t say make a DD Ele. You play DD ele because you like what it offers or staff because you like what it offers.

I can’t believe people want our sustain nerfed they did that before in 2013 with the RTL changes, the first Thief S/D changes. It was horrible and took them a while to correct it.

Cleansing water had a icd on it, signet of restoration had less healing, and I think it was dagger 5 in water gave less healing.

Get out with this Nerf elementalists healing stuff.

Yes the celestial amulet wasn’t as good but that’s the amulets fault and that isn’t a Elementalist specific problem.

Let them nerf the sustain and S/D instagib trying to imitate thief specs will be the only way to even try to play just like it was in 2013.

“Omg We have no sustain! I have to play a gimmick S/D build if the burst fails I die”

We have been there before if you played long enough.

The warhorn can be good and changed in how it functions. People assume that thieves are getting staffs which wouldn’t be bad if they used them in a martial arts type of manner. I think revenant uses a staff mêlée too.

I would prefer a sword for it to be a true mêlée which means no more 200-300 range stuff but a lot of 180 range and it would definitely be a change of pace, but if it is warhorn I would just judge it based on effectiveness and fun.

Well you have the burst damage from off hand dagger, but scepter was always out DPS’d by dagger main hand because of lightning whip. I don’t think scepter got worse in a vacuum, but it did because everyone else build allowed them to take more defensive stuff or more offensive stuff.

Arcane skills just suck besides the bubble. The blast and wave are decent damage guaranteed to crit, but just aren’t worth taking over survivability utilities. I’d honestly prefer them to move all the arcane skills into traits and give us something else.

I’m ok with stone heart actually, diamond skin should be resistance buff when you while attuned to earth and above 50% health. It can still be stripped but still strong enough that you would take it anyway.

I played all day yesterday with D/F appreciated it a little more. It’s a patient reactionary weapon, which I’ll be using more today.

I pray to Dwayna that they change/buff fire 4. I just can’t get jiggy with fire 4 or at least if it must stay as it is reduce the cast time to almost instant.

I think the damage difference from off-hand dagger is more than you realize. Fire Grab and Ring of fire do a lot of damage and no other off hand focus skill comes close to that damage. Lets say you pull a 5k fire grab and a 3k ring of Fire so 8k total damage you have to make up with lightning whip spam or whatever else. That’s a much longer fight if everyone is 15k-20k health accounting for one heal to get activated. Lightning Rod does help a little.

Shiro looked really cool I planned to level a Repentant and for sure will now after seeing that. I’ve had Zap and a Gift of bolt in my bank since 2013(I hated map completion the first time). Looks like I’ll just make bolt anyway for Shire and my thief and hopefully the new Ele specialization. I wouldn’t be bummed if it is warhorn as long as it’s good and fun.

Stepping into the OP’s hyperbolic vacuum of class comparisons.

If they give Ele’s weapon swap then should we also have a energy cost tied to all off our weapon skills, utilities, and elite’s?

You know because they slapped us in the face, because they simply gave Revenant’s weapon swaps without consideration of it’s other defining mechanics.

So if you RTL, Updraft, drakes breath, then fire grab someone you might not be able to activate Armor of Earth because you used all your energy. Balance Achieved!

/sarcasm