Guild Wars 2

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Since the game was released EVERY SINGLE BALANCE PREVIEW WAS 100% OF THE CHANGES.

That’s how it was usually but in the blog post on Tuesday they said scepter and focus are getting QoL changes. I haven’t heard about any focus changes from Karl so we may assume it doesn’t cover everything.

Obtena.7952:

Anet already fixed this food. It’s very reasonable as it is.

Not really. Long time ago we had a +10% crit dmg food which was then normalised to +70 ferocity after a ferocity implementation.

Ancestral Grace is also a blast finisher :^)

spoj.9672:

NikeEU.7690:

Which raid boss is heavy armor?

Gorseval?

Gorseval has “normal” armour though Sabetha receives a bit less damage from power specs.

NoTrigger.8396:

just from watching the PoV of the revenant, his gameplay is flawed, he autoattacks only, runs out of energy in glint, doesnt use sword 2 inside boss hitbox when surrounded by adds, makes super hero dodge jump moves which put him further away from the boss which is a dps loss because he has to run back and cant AA while doing so (even on vale guard and vale guard doesnt require any dodging at all), swaps to staff for breakbar when its completely overkill and not needed for any breakbar in the first raid wing. he would be able to deal a good amount of dps more than he does if he fixed the things i listed above.

what im trying to say, the timers in their current state arent tight or a problem at all if you are playing correctly and execution still matters more than the dps gain from ascended gear over exotics.

Super hero dodge jumps don’t move your character farther, it makes your jump farther, that’s the point of using it beside looking kewl. Jump distance depends on your moving speed and dodge always moves you the same distance. Combining jump and dodge you get a jump that will always move you as far as possible.

Shouts are simply too strong to benefit from CDR.

Once you complete the first encounter you’ll notice that each successive one has mechanics that make you fail it and those mechanics are not hard timers (chasing ghosts, limited updrafts, platform health pool).

Timers are there to limit your ability to recover, put more pressure on a team and disallow stacking defence.

Besides, once timer runs out, it’s not a wipe.

I know you’re joking but the current template for most teams that killed at least gorseval is something like that:

2 berserkers with PS/EA for might stacking and fury
2 heralds for fury stacking
1 chrono
1 druid for dps boosts and heals

That leaves 4 slots for dps oriented builds like condie engies, condie zerker, tempest, etc

Tempest as a spec that was advertised as a front line support failed horribly because Druid is a much better choice. Tempest has to increase its healing power/concentration to even have a similar potential as Druid (which can be a raid healer with just a berserker’s gear) and it doesn’t bring any unique dps boosts, again, unlike Druid. Grace of the Land, Glyph of Empowerment and somewhat bugged Frost Spirit increase your party (more like half of your party) damage by a considerable margin.

Once you get to Gorseval you’ll find out that there’s a little place for defensive tempest because that boss is a very strict dps check which requires finely tuned party composition.

NoTrigger.8396:

for the rotation, 3 questions.
why would you want to run out of energy?
why wouldnt you make use of the trait equilibrium?
why would you camp facet of strength when the party has 25 might anyway?

I believe that having more boons is better in the overall picture. As a herald your job is to maintain fury (as might stacking is the berserker’s job). That leaves few boons you could supply to your party, assuming of course you don’t have them already. Plus facet of nature of course which you don’t want to have active when you swap to shiro.

I don’t think that equilibrium is decent enough, it can be used only once every 10 seconds or even once in 20 seconds since I never have any energy left in shiro – not using IO is a cardinal sin for me.

Maybe I’m wrong but for my party I bring more unique boons than just fury. I do believe that this thing should be consider on per-team composition basis. But I’m not closed to different ideas, I’ll check your rotations and compare it to my own with the help of a dps meter.

Animism.6849:

Damage > dodging. UA > dodge. Scholar bonus instead of being hit.

This isn’t about UA but Precision Strike.

NoTrigger.8396:

it is reliable in every single raid boss fight.

Then we have a different definition of reliable.

I watched your fight with Gorseval and you used it about 10-15 times for the almost 6 minutes fight. Besides, even then, it’s not really reliable in pvp and balance touches both modes.

Second thing, whose rotation is better? Yours or obal’s? Because your rotations are different and I’d like to know which is preferred in raids. Or what is the reasoning behind them?

NoTrigger.8396:

i really wonder how people can still believe that.

Care to explain then? Because I don’t see it except a case with adds and precision strikes which isn’t exactly reliable.

Sword has no damage increase on its non auto attack, how would you change it? UA is already asking for nerfs in pvp.

What’s the weekly cap?

You could always play as a tank.

Mitch.4781:

It’s rapidly turning into it though. Anyone with highest toughness is automatically the “tank”…add in the druid healers. I saw some guildies spend liek 4 hours in spirit vale the other night..on the first boss.

Reminded me of everything I hated about WOW. Sigh

No worries, the second boss requires no tank.

nearlight.3064:

Yeah from what I’ve read people are looking at tank ideas that can have good sustain needed for tanking while taking the minimum amount of non zerk gear (so a few cav trinkets or toughness food to get aggro) which is why people are suggesting reaper and dragonhunter for that. Reaper especially because in shroud makes survivng and soaking up damage so easy while you still are in mostly zerk so you can still deal a lot of damage.

I meant that for the second boss you will not take a tank like ever. There’s no clear aggro mechanic and even if there was such, the enrage timer is so short you cannot allow yourself to reduce your damage potential.

Shiraya.4012:

Tempest. You can consolidate your healer and your tank into one character as a tempest. A Tempest tank can be self sustaining and still provide huge healing to allies, leaving a 9th slot for DPS.

That could be the case if a tank was actually always needed.

There is no trait that gives aoe stunbreaks on warhorn.

Both druid and engineer have a smoke field.

Bleeds are pretty kitten since June patch. You want to maximise burning and for that dagger is a better choice. Moreover, power overwhelming loses with pyromancer’s training horribly, not picking 33% cdr is a capital sin.

Galandil.9641:

And yes, under Alacrity, teef’s dps goes down the drain compared to most other classes, unless they change Alacrity giving +66% regen to ini.

I think it’s fair that alacrity doesn’t work for thieves seeing how chill doesn’t work

CDUB.1645:

I run D/D Tempest (Perma Prot, Regen,Vigor, Cleanse, Heals) and have great sustain and I am thinking about using it in Raids. However, I would change based on needs of group/guild. I personally dont like how pretty much all WH skills are 30+ CDs (Air skills are 25sec). Too me that should be fix, some may be justified at 30sec but 6 of 8 skills are 30sec+ and the other 2 are 25sec.

Your team still needs to have quite a decent damage potential, this build doesn’t offer that so you must be certain that your other team mates will bring enough damage, both direct and condition.

youkai.2394:

Ele staff still do a kittenton of damage with staff fire, ice bow ecc. while granting a lot of fury, might and vulnerability. I would say at least 1 zerk ele will be a must.

6 might stacks is a lot?

Mallis.4295:

Are you talking about burst or sustained because that does not sound realistic for sustained at all.

The only thing in that list that cannot be maintained throughout the long fight is the presence of both banners.

Aomine.5012:

lol. I think it’s either your skill issue or gear issue or trait issue.
HoT is not exactly “hard” compare to high level fractal with disgusting debuffs, (Cliff Side lv59 rings the bell)

I hope you mean 94 cause 59 is arguably easier than pre-HoT 50 (much less damage).

I tried Earth Air Tempest, half marauder and the rest full zerk and can roam in HoT map with ease and still killing things very fast. In fact the survivability is much better than I originally anticipated. Long lasting protection, on demand stability/breakstun, high aoe damage, lots healing.

You can’t be serious talking about high damage and earth trait line in one sentence. Fire line is obligatory to get a decent damage spec in pve, picking it increases lava font by more than 81%.

Skady.5916:

I don’t see how changes listed by Gaile gonna promote playerbase to run anything but swamp/duo/maw. Even if you add 75-100 daily, people will run 77-80-90 and will be done with it. We need a daily “Do lvl 94 fractal” to get it to work.

No one will do that fractal as a daily, they would simply skip the day. It’s not worth the effort.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

That’s exactly what I said. They did it thinking it will make things more challenging. The plan obviously failed, but now what? We go back to plain 100% simple zerker meta all over again?

That’s what I’m asking.

The scaling will still apply, just in 1-50 range. It should not be that severe though, quadratic scaling of toughness AND hp is quite brutal currently.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Balance
After reviewing stat scaling we have decided to make an adjustment to how toughness scales. From fractal scale 1 to 50 the toughness stat of creatures will scale up with the fractal scale. Beyond fractal scale 50 the toughness stat of creatures will no longer increase with the scale of the fractal. This is to make damage builds more viable in higher level fractals.

Does that mean that mobs at 50+ will have 5000+ toughness?

Menem.4307:

Warhorn is so laughably bad it’s not even funny. It is outclassed not only by the other classes new weapons, but our own too. Dagger or focus is superior in every way over crappy warhorn. The cast times and animations are simply ridiculous for such garbage spells. I’m not sure what the devs were thinking when they made it..

They were thinking how to get rid of a sword asap.

No wipes? Is that even possible now? Bosses are health sponges that present no threat.

grahf.7540:

You type all that, and we still don’t know if the OP is talking PVE or PVP. If it’s PVP then I stand by the statement that air/fire/tempest is terrible. PVE, no idea.

Ever seen a topic about lost dps for ele in regards to pvp?

Sollinton.6842:

Now you might say “Take Soothing Ice, Cleansing Wave, and Cleansing Water/Soothing Power!” but let’s be honest, those are pretty awful for PvE. Not only do they result in a huge DPS loss, they have very little survivability. Soothing Ice has an ICD of 20s, meaning it will generally only proc once during a solo fight and maybe two-three times against a fractal boss. Cleansing Wave and Cleansing Water are decent, but unnecessary for survivability seeing as we have plenty of condi removal without them. Soothing Power is near useless because a properly played D/F ele spends so little time in Water.

Bosses have 0% crit chance, only mobs are able to crit.

Wethospu.6437:

The different is pretty crazy.

Prepatch health scale was linear and armor constant. Now both health and armor scales are quadratic. I will get exact values soon.

I wonder who thought that would be a good idea.

Shouldn’t those be dps builds?

Exactly. And that’s why my raid team has currently 0 eles. If ele is so great at dps why both of the teams that finished beta raid encounter had 0 of them as well?

Coldtart.4785:

I’m assuming you mean pve here so I feel I should point out that fire/air/tempest is currently the highest dps ele build for pve. Of course, it plays exactly the same as the old fire/air/water build so I can use it as yet more evidence that tempest does absolutely nothing differently to core ele.

Against the golem in the mists that is. Any new mob in maguuma (and that most likely include bosses and mobs in raids) is more mobile than its counterpart in central tyria.

And let’s not even go into high scale fractals where condition damage deals like twice the damage.

Stebene.9275:

Tempest is far from weak, the thing is that most people are just so stuck with the old D/D playstyle that they didn’t adjust to tempest yet, or just don’t want to because they don’t like it. Personally I enjoy it far more than the old elementalist because now it’s not just attunement swap every other second just for boon stacking. Though you still stack a lot of boons as tempest but it definately is a different playstyle.

And as Blaine Tog says, if you like it, stick with it. That’s the reason why I always come back to ele, even if I played mesmer, revenant, or engineer for some time.

A whole bunch of pvers is stuck with the old d/d.

Did anyone except anet expected a different outcome?

Scrap that, that’s a rhetorical question.

Stand The Wall.6987:

You guys gotta chill out. Berserker was in a bad state, and guess what? It got buffed today. Guess what else? I think its likely that tempest will see some improvements as well.

I admire your optimism.

Jski.6180:

Utility so like shouts vs wells? I think shouts win. When it comes to WH vs shield due to the way ele/tempest works WH is better then shield there just simply more use for the WH on its own then chron shield. The only thing added Chron gets for its f1-f5 skills is the time split but that in pvp is easy to counter it may have a use in pve though then f1-f5 skills for tempest are all useful and fill a very set in stone roll. I think the only thing chron has over a tempest is it trait line.

There a major problem looking at classes like this for the elite spec your forgetting the main class they are part of. A lot of what tempest is comes is what an ele who was an avages class but with good aoe tools to start with. Chron had mez to start with whom was a major powerhouse of a class with very good single target dmg and effects.

Utility as in utility, not utility skill. Shouts are utility skills but they have barely any utility. All shouts do is to give aura and deal some basic thematic damage (fire shout burns, water shout chills, etc). Wells are much more than that, they have mechanics that can be utilised in many situations, not just to increase your damage or defense. The elite well is significantly better than rebound. In other words, shouts are one dimensional, they are not fun to use.

I’m not sure why you keep claiming chrono is just f5 when in reality it’s a spec which is much more complete than tempest could ever be. Shield is actually a weapon of choice now in pve and the same cannot be said for warhorn. It’s filled with skills that compete with shatterstone for the worst skill in the game reward.

To put some salt on the wound, the only spec that Robert Gee failed at (at least in pvp) was significantly buffed today. Tempest had no genuine changes since BWE2 except earthen proxy change.

I’m pretty sure I’m wasting my time here since it’s pretty clear you just can’t be convienced that tempest in reality we all live isn’t as good as you think.

Jski.6180:

Ok… dead game mode that ppl still play so not sure how its dead or even how bring up this point is relevant to talking about tempest vs chron. Are you trying to hijack this?

Any way even in spvp/pve ele/tempest has always been an aoe master that is the ideal of the class and why some of the healing effect and dmg effects are less burst and more dps base becuse if it was the same type of burst say mez/chron has and aoe it would be only ele/tempest needed for every thing. Aoe vs single target is the real question of vs what we are talking about here.

I think you misunderstood the OP. He talks about utility. Besides, tempest aoe capability is rather disappointing considering its name. The storm it can summon (air overload) isn’t even an aoe since it can only target 3 entity (unless autoattacks are aoes now then I concur). Warhorn skills try to win the contest with shatterstone over which skill is the worst in the game. I can’t see any decent or worthy aoe skill there as well, it’s all small range or small arc.

Supreme.3164:

Tempest can deal kitten load of burning/bleed, while tempest runes are quite bad, I’d say that they lack boon duration because they wanted to avoid a OP synergy with minstrel stats which has boon duration, you could have added boon duration food, arcane line + imbued melodies for massive boon duration

I think this applies only to pvp. In pve drake’s breath is considered a dps loss and no one should use it ever. Condition damage ele/tempest is “a bit” lacking there.

Jski.6180:

And most of chronomancer dmg is from GS yet mez can use GS why do you not give the same leeway to other class’s? Chronomancer/mez dose dmg very well its support is only soso and more of the time its pure self support. Ele/tempest is aoe base both dmg and support.

Maybe in a dead game mode that should be deleted long time ago. Hopefully, anet notices that no one plays wvw anymore and act upon it.

Windsagio.1340:

I have you goofball, in fact we did it again tonight to get a guy that just came back his 50 fractal for the fractal chests.

The fact that you guys don’t think this will work and are SOOOOO sure that it won’t work and so sure I"m lying is freaking hilarious.

Of course it works in your party with ~4% crit chance. Disenchanters are enough for that, we realise that. However, we’re talking about parties that have up to 100% crit chance.

Windsagio.1340:

In honesty, no I’m waiting on some friends who are collecting AR before we can get into the higher tiers.

How does that apply to the rewards crying though?

I’m in agreement about the damage sponge stuff and the low damage output issues, it becomes visible well before 90.

So basically you comment here based on rumours and act as an expert telling people to adapt.

Windsagio.1340:

But you haven’t tried it, and don’t quite get the build.

This is something we (well one of the others) figured out to try in the first 5 minutes of us doing the new fractals (doing the 50 right after HOT released). The Mesmer takes a fairly substantial dps drop because you’re not using damage phantasms, but the net party gain is enormous.

Of course the cleansing isn’t perfect, but it avoids the normal zerk party fury/retal/25 might/10 stability/protection/occasional aegis issue that you get in the 41-50 bracket otherwise.

~~~

Honestly this goes directly to my point. People never even tried to be creative in dealing with the instability, but instead tried to haedbutt it to death and then complain about it.

You also haven’t tried that.

Windsagio.1340:

The loot stuff primarily. You think the dev has never heard “Its horrible that I dont’ get more stuff!!!” before?

The instability stuff feels similar to me, but it’s subject to interpretation.

The low output health sponges is the thing I keep referring to as a real issue and the issue we should be focusing on.

Have you done fractals 90+?

Windsagio.1340:

The entitled crybaby stuff only draws attention away from the real issues.

Which is what exactly? Except garbage drop rates, boring health sponges and a decrease of instabilities?

Axialbloom.8109:

Karl is Dragonhunter, Daredevil and Tempest.
Robert is Berserker, Reaper and Chronomancer.
Irenio is Scapper and Druid.
Roy is Revenant (and maybe some Scrapper and Druid?)

Find the pattern :^)