Guild Wars 2

And unfortunately, it’ll probably take half a year until Anet starts to address that. Just look at us poor Elementalists.

Hugh Norfolk.2798:

When you do receive Npc reward box on a reward track you will receive 2 of them and each box counts towards 5 “Npc” kills. So opening the 2 boxes is like killing 10 bears. Also to make sure the boxes feel rewarding you are guaranteed 1 green per box so 2 greens total.

Hiya, I have two questions!

Is the guaranteed item only a green, or can it be any tier starting from green to anything higher? Like, is there any chance that we get a gold or exotic out of the guaranteed green roll?

And is there any “special” npc chest, even if at higher track tiers, that gives us a guaranteed gold or higher tier?

Heh, burst eles will automatically get 5s of vigor (or more with some boon duration) with a single critical hit. It gives vigor 100% of the time now. So as long as you keep dealing damage – as you should – you’ll keep vigor on yourself. It does not allows you to stack anything more than that, though, but ultimately, that will only negatively affect sustained defense, and the only elementalists who can sustain themselves are very defensive in the first place.

Instead of asking for its removal, how would you nerf it instead?

Maybe only 3 stacks per interruption?

Converting conditions into boons actually sounds like a very flavorful idea for an earth magic trait.

Diamond Skin – 15 second cooldown
If you’re over 90% health, the next time you would get hit by a condition, you convert all incoming conditions into boons instead for 3 seconds.

jportell.2197:

yeah except remember when cleansing water was nerfed into the ground

the only reason you see eles in pvp now is the undoing of that nerf

You don’t need cleansing water to make a good ele build post-patch.

Many things added up to put eles at a better position (buffs, reverts, other prof nerfs, new gear mechanics), but possibly the most significant of all the changes, was the buff to the celestial amulet.

ugrakarma.9416:

mine:
– reorganize categories in lfg tool, at least separate raids. if it is ask too much.

And add a Search feature!

Beldin.5498:

I remember that when you payed around 25 Gold for the first picks people did the math and said that you have to harvest maybe 65.000 time so that you have started to save money against buying orichalcum picks.

Now .. if you have harvest over 65.000 that item will suddenly also be pay to win since every 100 picks you save the money you would else have to pay for a new pick.

Now however a new pick costs what ? 80 Gold maybe ? So you have to pick maybe 180.000 times to get back the money. If you save 6,7 copper per pick now because of the sprockets you will maybe still have to pick over 100.000 times that the investment pays of.

And because this is highly unrealistic, and demands a really heavy time investment and devout dedication, there is nothing remotely close to P2W behind this mining pick.

Even in the day where players will finally save money out of this, they will do so not because they “bought to win”, but because of their crazy dedication.

I think the bad name makes people subconciously think that the dragonhunter is worse than what it is.

I mean, let’s forget about the name. Guardian’s elite spec is pretty much a leaping angel, and sort of like a divine hunter entity. Elite specs are not only meant to be extentions of each prof’s themes, but also a dev interpretation of what a dual-classing theme would be like. And what is their interpretation of a Guardian/ Ranger spec? Bows that shoot symbols, arrows of bouncing light, shield arrows, Ray of Judgement traps, ward-ish version of traps, winged leaps and the like. That’s all awesome.

That being said, Chronomancer and Reaper are god-tier and surpringly better than what I expected from Anet. The theme is immediately appealing, the playstyle feels more unique, yet fits perfectly with the theme, the new death shroud animation is of a deadly beauty, and Robert’s way with puns kind of gives an extra charm to it all. Robert is quickly becoming my favourite prof designer at Anet with those two elite specs. I feel that he offers some fresh new ideas to the team (mesmer’s trait changes are also an example of that), and I find Reaper and Chrono to be at near-perfect status, be it for their playstyle, for how focused and immediately appealing their theme is, for their charming skill/ trait names, and especially for how well gameplay communicates the theme of the spec.

For DH to be on-par, he needs a better name and a more focused thematic quality. For example, their new virtues are really interesting, but they feel more like something you’d expect from a paragon. And then you have what generally seems to be a divine ranger, only to have a dragon-named elite that is clearly there just for the sake of the spec’s name to make sense (which it still doesn’t).

With a bit of a polish, DH can be easily on par with other specs. Change the name to something that invokes a divine-hunter-ish theme, make RoJ trap the elite trap instead of the dragon-themed one (IMO) – perhaps even go as far as remove anything dragon-ish from that skill (animation and name), and suddenly, everything will fit together very nicely. We’ll then have what the spec truly is – a holy ranger of light.

If our trait lines are any indication, only players meant to invest on arcana should attunement swap like crazy, while players investing on fire/ air/ earth/ water should want to stick with them for the best results, only changing to other attunements when in need, changing right back to their specced elements to yield more results than changing to the remaining others.

I personally prefer that playstyle. I like that we have the option to pick our favourite or our two favourite attunements, while attunement swapping being relevant but secondary, unless we specc for us to be crazily dependent on our main mechanic. Unfortunately, that option sucks due to bad traits.

You know, all/ most other professions work like that. Shatters will always be useful to a Mesmer, but they can be a secondary skillset while mesmers focus on keeping phantasms, creating clones, etc, depending on their build. Animal companions will always be there for the Ranger, but they can be secondary or drive the whole build. Virtues will always define the Guardian, but they’ll either be passive effects to several guardian’s builds most of the time, or really strong activated abilities to other Guardian’s builds.

Why must we, elementalists, depends on our main mechanic more than any other profession? Why must we not have the option to make half of the elements we like best inherently stronger than the remaining half of the elements we like the least?

Why can’t I be a mobile fire/ air burst-focused elementalist, or go fire/ earth for a more defensive condition-damaging elementalist? All other attunements would still be secondary options, but they could be, or not, relevant depending on my need. This would give more personality to the elementalists builds. It would make elementalists more unique compared to each other.

And for those that absolutely love dancing through all attunements equally? You’d still have the arcana traitline for that purpose.

JonPeters.5630:

I can assume (…), but you know what happens when you assume.

The irony here only makes Jon’s post all the better.

zenleto.6179:

I’ve been playing GW1 for the last few months and I find it incredible that people rely on their memories as the truth of all things. But that’s nostalgia for you.

Not everyone relies on “memories” and “nostalgia”. I was playing GW1 right until the pre-launch of GW2, so I don’t judge the first game based on “sweet, distant memories”.

For first impressions, GW2 seems to be the better game. Prettier, bigger, streamlined, seamless, certainly more ambitious. But as a player that digs deeper and deeper into each game, GW1 has a lot to offer beyond first impressions, with more focused storytelling, the concept of horizontal progression handled better, challenging and satisfying endgame content, well designed missions/ dungeons (exceptions aside), PvP with a lot more infrastructure and support, better enemy encounters, and especially a very deep character building system that has generated a lot of unique roles that go beyond the basic dps-tank-heal trinity.

GW2, in comparison, has failed at many of those aspects. Its endgame content is broken, its attempt at expanded the role diversity lead to the very opposite dps-only meta, character building system is mostly shallow (traits aside) and unsatisfying, horizontal progression functionality is heavily clashing against vertical progression gear, pvp is barebones, pve mob encountering is primitive as possible, and some of the best things about GW2 were left forgotten or have been going nowhere (dynamic events).

This is usually expected from a newly-launched game, where the first experience is much better and the second experience goes downhill until the game is updated and enhanced. But then comes another big problem with GW2: how Anet choose to update it. We had a first year where the focus was on creating festivals, a second year where the focus was on experimenting with a new concept whose first execution didn’t work very well, and inbetween we’ve gotten grind, gemstore items, farmville dailies, some nice QoL changes, and some nice content that was mostly temporary.

GW2 had the ambition of being one of the greatest MMOs out there, it had the potential for that, and it still has.

But that potential has been mostly untapped for two years, some MAJOR problems are yet to be solved, and the “we’re doing things different!” gimmick is not as charming after two underwhelming years than it was at launch.

EDIT: Just to be clear, I think GW1 was also a flawed game and GW2 is still a nice game. But GW1 had certainly one thing that GW2 hasn’t yet: a very focused direction. Anet knew what it wanted out of GW1, and gradually updated the game towards very specific goals. GW2, in turn, is drifting as a very directionless game. Anet wants GW2 to be a little bit of everything, without having enough time, budget and manpower to make sure GW2 is great at all of those things.

Trait for sword number 3 to reflect projectiles.
Trait for teleports to be ground-targeted (sword used to be like that in beta, right?)

Stuff like that. Have no time to add more ideas now, unfortunately.

JonPeters.5630:

Oh the new thief heal is going to mix some things up for sure!!!

So far, I find elementalists to have the most interesting set of healing skills. The glyph is very creative, the renewal involves risk/ reward, the signet demands some intense play, and pretty much all of them can be useful anywhere. I hope their forth healing skill won’t disappoint!

Meanwhile, I find Mesmer’s heals to be mostly niche. Mirror and Mantra barely see general use, even though they can be great in very specific situations. I hope their forth healing skill won’t disappoint!

Finally, unless you’re planning to add an even crazier healing skill, or tone down a certain heal, chances are, it won’t affect warriors in the slightest. I hope their forth healing skill won’t disappoint warrior players!

PUTTING PRESSURE ON YOU!

All those changes are important because they fix the several flaws that GW2 has early game: the lack of a sense of progression, poor tutorials, directionless, forgottable rewards and jumpy story instances that forced you to level up midway, interrupting the flow of the story.

So far, this feature patch is great for new players, but, what about the veteran players? It doesn’t seems to offer much to make us stick to the game.

Honestly, I have a different view on the elementalist class than most people here.

Even though the elementalist is clearly difficult to balance for, and there’s certainly some inherent problems with the class, I feel that the core of the problem is not (only) the class, but pve’s design.

There’s a reason why elementalists are extremely strong in pvp. Yes, they are as much a jack-of-all-trades in pvp as they are in pve, but being good at too many things has proven to be competitive enough against being great at a few things, bad at others. An elementalist, in pvp, can run away decently, can heal themselves back to health, can spam boons on themselves, can burst and crowd control with plenty of aoe and decent single-target burst. A specialized burst build might be able to take them down faster – but if it’s unable to, chances are, it’ll lose, because it can’t keep up with the elementalist’s survival.

There’s also a reason why warriors are so overpowered in pve, while they have been sucky in pvp.

I believe the problem is pve’s design and its shallow meta state. GW2 was designed around a trinity, named damage/ control/ support, but GW2’s pve is dominated by damage, and specifically critical damage. Conditions are crippled by capped stacks; control is ruined by defiance; support is pointless in an environment that is too much focused on solo players, self-defense, and when there’s a lack of infrastructure to reliably support our allies without missing our healing fields just because they moved away from them.

An elementalist, by being a jack-of-all-trades, means that they are decent at everything: burst, aoe damage, condition damage, crowd control, party support. PvE, akittens current state, is all about burst, and little about anything else. What is the end result of all this? An elementalist is mediocre compared to most other professions.

What is the single best pve team setup? A mesmer, a guardian and three warriors. You might take out one warrior for a specialized condition build. The warriors offer extreme critical damage; a mesmer offers strong sustained damage in addition to time wrap and some extra party support, and guardians party damage mitigation is the most reliable in the entire game. You don’t see mesmers being used to interrupt foes; you don’t see warriors without greatswords; you don’t see stuff like that, because pve’s environment is that shallow.

If control, party support, aoe and condition damage were all equally viable to burst damage, an elementalist would offer a lot to the party. A profession that can, single-handely, heal the party and fill it with boons, interrupt foes and crowd control, and still have all kinds of damage available for all kinds of situation, makes the profession strong in theory. If pve’s environment was more complex, if the strategy behind each content was far more diversified and far deeper, the value of adaptable classes like the elementalist would be far more valued.

Think about it: would you want a specialized build that would be conditionally good, conditionally bad? Imagine if half the time, warriors were crippled, chilled, immobilized, blinded, etc, and couldn’t do anything without party support? Imagine if defiance was only applied at specific times, instead of being completely passive, and in addition to offering immunity to control, it would also offer immunity to criticals? Imagine if there were situations where bosses were immune to direct damage, and only conditions would work? If pve had a more diversifed experience and difficulty, the jack-of-all-trades classes would shine, because there would never exist a time where they would be wasting their time.

In the end, elementalists, among several other professions, suffer from a shallow pve experience that is driven by a single strategy – berzerker gear and specialized burst builds.

More account bound items should be a strategy to improve rewards in this game without breaking the economy, in my opinion. I wonder if Anet agrees with that or not.

“Zerker” meta will be fixed with better encounters and a more balanced stat scaling.

The former solution because, if “hard” encounters rely on defiance, on one-hit kill skills, and if condition stacking remains as it is, all defensive and condition stats will remain pointless.

The later solution because some stats don’t scale enough, like healing power, which makes little to no difference most of the time, or toughness, which only scales as half as much as power does. Meanwhile, power is a godlike stat. It is possibly the greatest stat in this game, by far. It scales better than defensive stats, it can be multiplied with precision and critical damage, it is not restricted by immunity to critical hits, it is not restricted by condition capping, etc. That’s why when critical hits are not viable due to immunity, people go to the best power set without critical dependence.

For piles of silky sand, that some people have mentioned, I have a better solution: give us the ability to consume less than 10 of them, with lower odds of obtaining items. For example, consuming 3 would have 30% chance of giving us an item, and 7 would be 70%. Then add in a Consume All option, if there isn’t one already, and the issue will be fixed.

Piles of Sand need a QoL improvement, not storage space.

Hanako.1827:

Rename this to "Ele Patch spoiler They still suck

Seriously this is worthy of a forum post to you? If you guys make this out like it is a big deal than I dread too see the future for elementalists. Quit making me go support and make damage builds more viable and fix this broken class.

Staff is a support weapon. If you don’t like playing support/ staff, and care about viable damage builds, there’s already s/f or s/d air burst builds for pvp (although certainly countered by the current meta, unfortunately), and s/d lightning hammer builds for pve.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Hotjoin is going to be chaotic no matter what we do since people are free to leave at any time. For people who are wanting a more structured experience, why not play solo or team arena? I’m not asking this to sidestep your concerns, but rather to find out why there is a desire to force structure upon hotjoin when there is already a more structured game mode. This would help us determine if hotjoin actually needs some restructuring, or if there is a better place these types of players can go.

Because solo and team queue are “competitive”. Not all players wish to participate in more stressful, competitive queues, especially for those that are still learning, or want to experiment new builds, or want to play with friends for fun. But that does not means that they want to be left with a structureless mode where match quality is sacrificed and biased because of that (and where playing in the same team with your friends is hard and completely dependent on other factors).

Let’s say that, currently, players have to choose between two extremes: either they go full competitive, or they’re left with mindless, unstructured chaos.

In other words, there’s no alternative, outside of competitive queues, that offers structured matchmaking for a quality pvp experience.

(Cough We need an unranked/ leaderboardless queue cough)

Yeah, it’s clear that dynamic events didn’t have that permanent impact Anet originally wanted them to do, and thus why the Living World concept was born. But to be perfectly honest, I feel that the next evolution of the living world concept is… guess what, the dynamic event system itself.

This is how current dynamic events usually work:

1. A trigger activates them;
2. Objectives revolve around “renown heart” fetch quests to scout guarding, and the area gets marked in the map;
3. Once the goals are acchieved (or not) by the community, three of the following consequences happen: a) nothing; b) trigger a new event, as part of a sequence/ chain; c) create or destroy something in the world (the “illusion” of an ever-changing world).

So, all or most of those steps can be improved.

Step number 2 can demand, as I suggested, more exploration (“find x” goals NOT marked in the map = this is key), or generate unique challenging and strategical enemy encounters worthy of a dungeon (something that the open world definitely lacks). Each of them would improve this game’s experience, which is currently driven by “go to that place marked by the map” and “kill x mindless enemies”. Another possibility is a story-driven scenario, with ambushes, betrayal, epic sieges, protection, dillema within killing choices, etc; which would create more interesting open-world scenarios too. Plenty of potential untapped here.

Step number 3b can benefit from an improved structure, and it would go along well with the more story-driven events. I suggested the narrative structure, with a beginning, a climax, etc. A non-linear story can be told, world’s lore can be expressed through dialogue, exploration and gameplay, etc. Some of this already happens in-game, but it’s a bit shy and lacks impact, maybe because lore-driven events lack that structure or maybe because gameplay encounters and the event sequence as a whole are not unique enough to convey the experience intended.

Step number 3c, as I said in my previous post, can be done by having event cycling contribute to the build up of something that would takes days or even months to acchieve, instead of instantly building or destroying something the moment it is completed. And, of course, each time they would cycle, there would be a system of sorts that would generate different encounters to keep each cycle diversified. This would incentivate entire guilds to stay in one area for a few days to build a city from the ground up, and then remain there to defend it, maybe even being rewarded with the city’s ownership and tax control thanks to their contribution in building it. And then, as more time passes (for example, a week, or a month), the system would generate invasions tht would scale in difficulty, until it was nearly impossible to defend it, activing a new set of events revolving around taking it back, and if still unsuccessful, by preventing it from being destroyed, or by building it back whatever was destroyed and preserving whatever was not. It could go as far as generating events to strenghten the structures of the city, almost like a WvW simulation versus PvE mobs. THIS would be an example of an ultimate dynamic event system, and if GW2 would ever to acchieve this someday, it would be ground-breaking. I believe EverQuest Next is trying to go after the potential this sytem might have, which was left untapped by Anet, but Anet has the years of experience and code, so if they decide to go this route anytime soon (if they haven’t already), they’ll certainly still be ahead of time.

And finally, as I also said in my last post, it’s how the events scale. Not only by adding more enemies (not always a good idea), or by adding champions (which is cool in context of the new reward system), but by spreading players. Not spreading in the “let’s zerg this event, and swamp the next one, and then the next one” kind of way, but “spread! if we don’t complete the three around the same time, bad stuff is going to happen!”. So if there were over 25 players in an event, the event could very well generate 4-ish ou 5-ish smaller sub-events that need to be completed at the same time, with the difficulty adequate enough for that many players. Imagine a champion in each of those small events. :P It would force players to play really well.

Queen’s Pavillion encounters are more interesting (Am I seeying weakness and cripple in my UI?), but if there’s one thing that this new content patch proves, is that it’s just nearly impossible for anet to make challenging content for a zerg. It just doesn’t happens. A zerg is always mindless, but more so than that, there’s problems with screen cluttering and lag. The best option is to have that zerg spread – to divide that zerg in several categories. Let’s call that “zerg control”. :P Anet needs mechanisms for “zerg control”.

The thing I don’t like about Trading Post, is how it has been killing one of the most fundamental RPG features – exciting looting.

Almost every single reward in GW2 revolves around currencies, generic materials or generic salvage fodder. The exciting exceptions are heavily driven by very low RNG values, for the sake of the “in-game economy”.

It’s very satisfying to work for and get, from a loot, a specific skin or a specific weapon that is statistically stronger than what we have, and get to equip it and say to ourselves, “this is the weapon I’ve gotten from finishing this kind of content”. But that barely exists in GW2. Most of the stuff you get is fodder to salvage kits, with generic skins, that can drop pretty much from anywhere and everywhere. Even the rare drops are easily gotten by predictable world boss patterns, and have no purpose but to salvage as well, or to sell for other players to salvage.

Grevender.9235:

is there anything that relates harder content with it being interesting/highly replayable? (it’s an honest question, ‘cause I don’t see a logic link between the two factors)

That’s an interesting question.

In theory, harder content demands more out of the player making the best use of the battle system. Conditions, boons, stun breaks, timed dodges, interrupts, etc. If a battle system is designed around those elements, and yet they are absent from 99% of the enemy encounters, then we can safely assume that the combat system is not acchieving its full potential, which in turn it’s not as satisfying and fun as it could have been.

However, there’s such a thing as a middle ground between mindless auto-attacking zergs and niche super difficult content. I’ll even go as far as to say that I refuse to believe that challenging content can’t appeal to casuals. It all depends on either the company can or can not hit that middle ground spot.

Another user has sait it best: what this game lacks the most, is fun mechanics. Something that makes battles more creative, more engaging, more distinct from each other, even if that does not exactly translates into “high difficulty” content.

GW2 needs to make better use of its combat system. Which is not an easy to thing to acchieve, by itself, when so many of its core mechanics are broken (condition stacks, defensive stats, defiance, poor infrastructure for party supporting, spammy skills, poor balance, etc).

It is certainly weak compared to Purging Flames. :P

This thread is about how fun or not fun support playstyles are, not about how useful they are in the current pve meta.

I agree that support is currently not very fun. I mean, timing and positioning your reflection is cool, and combo fields/ finishers can lead to some interesting rotations, but other than that, you’re simply going to melee range and throwing your PBAoE support skills to your allies, many of them that are fire-and-forget or even instant-cast. It’s not exactly… the most satisfying playstyle.

Sure, for players that like going offense with secondary support, which is how the current pve meta is more or less defined, they won’t mind. There’s plenty of other things that make it funnier, like damage rotations, timing some crowd control effects, or the pure satisfaction of seeing high numbers over your opponent’s head, etc. But for those players that wish for a more supportive/ less offensive playstyle (note: this does not means that I’m defending a holy trinity setup), the playstyle is simply not very interesting.

Fortunately, anet realizes that. Ventari’s tablet and staff seems to have a very elaborated playstyle based on support. Tablet positioning, delayed heals, your token anti-projectile field – which you can even move, healing shards on the ground that need to be catched, etc.

I hope to see more fun and elaborated playstyles around support (and crowd control too) in the future. Stuff that makes you spend more time supporting or controlling that merely dealing damage, but while still making combat as fun and as interesting.

The ventari tablet is not meant to be a minion mechanic, so comparing it to spirits, turrets or the like makes no sense and is off-topic.

The tablet is just a vehicle that marks where your utility spells will trigger. It’s not very different than the simple concept of ground-targetted skills, except it is more elaborated and unique in order to offer a more unique playstyle. Just because it has a physical appearance, it does not automatically makes it a minion mechanic.

I hope those numbers are “outdated” and have been rebalanced since then for the patch. This game needs less mindless “Healing Signet Warrior” builds, not more.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

I love it. Very fitting and cool!

I love it too, it just gets old fast if you have to watch it all the time when you’re just relaxing and exploring a map with swiftness on.

Thus why I’d rather have it appear only while in combat.

Okay, here’s my feedback. I’m excited for the revenant, and I enjoyed it overall, but it had several issues:

Staff/ Ventari

1. AA’s healing shards disappear too quickly. Make them last ~1 second longer.
2. AA’s healing shards are sometimes placed in awkward situations, where you must turn your back and cancel your auto-attacking to catch a shard.
3. Block skill should deal some damage back (projectile reflection or something else). It’s a cool skill, but it could have been a bit more impactful, I think.
4. Having to press two buttons (F1 + 6) for the tablet is clumsy. Make it respawn instantly by your side by pressing F1.
5. Perfectionist players will want to spam the 2-sec heal as fast as possible, to keep the HPS as high as possible, leading to a frustating playstyle. Give it a 4-8 second cooldown instead, but with stronger healing per use.

Hammer

1. Skills feel slow and unrewarding. Either make them faster, or increase their DPS.
2. Clumsy in melee scenarios. It would be nice if it got some sort of knockback or leap backwards.

Jalis:

1. The taunt skill costs half of your energy bar, has a 1 second casting time, yet it ends before you can even see it (/hyperbole, kinda). That 2 second duration is really, really underwhelming. Make it 4 second instead.
2. The elite skill’s casting time is too long. Make it 1-1.5 seconds shorter. Increase its energy cost if needed.

Mallyx:

1. The combo costs too much energy. It seems to fun on paper having to chain all those condis on you, but you deplet so much of your energy that you’re left with an elite skill that barely lasts 3-ish seconds. And that’s no fun, considering how cool the elite is meant to be.

If the leaked notes are true, gale will be an aoe-line knockback, eruption and lava font will have shorter casting times (not animation times), meteor shower’s individual radius for each hit is going to be bigger, and most of the skill’s aftercast durations are going to be reduced – sometimes up to half. That should make staff’s playstyle smoother and faster.

Also, the possibly reworked fire grandmaster trait should allow you to get fury out of lava font for each blast finisher. How cool is that?

…Needs a different swinging animation.

It’s a very unique weapon, much like Mesmer’s Greatsword. However, the GS set a great precedent with its own unique AA beam and floating sword. In comparison, the Revenant is simply swinging their hammer through the air, which just seems lazy and cheap.

I mean, if a random flying rabbit is wandering by without being targeted, revenant’s hammer will simply pass through it like wind. Random flying rabbit’s flight might get disturbed, for sure, by the swirling air. Their body is light and easily carried by the wind. And it is good for the preservation of flying rabbits. But it doesn’t fits revenant’s deadly theme. No one will take a revenant seriously anymore.

“Dude, the guy’s right in front of you. How haven’t you smashed his face already?”
“What I cannot physically see, my hammer cannot physically hit.”
“Sure, dude. You’re not gonna get along well with babes.”

Okay, now that this thread has Roy’s attention, I’m going to copy-past my impressions and feedback from the monstrous merge thread. I’m excited for the revenant, and I enjoyed it overall, but it had several issues:

Staff/ Ventari

1. AA’s healing shards disappear too quickly. Make them last ~1 second longer.
2. AA’s healing shards are sometimes placed in awkward situations, where you must turn your back and cancel your auto-attacking to catch a shard.
3. Block skill should deal some damage back (projectile reflection or something else). It’s a cool skill, but it could have been a bit more impactful, I think.
4. Having to press two buttons (F1 + 6) for the tablet is clumsy. Make it respawn instantly by your side by pressing F1.
5. Perfectionist players will want to spam the 2-sec heal as fast as possible, to keep the HPS as high as possible, leading to a frustating playstyle. Give it a 4-8 second cooldown instead, but with stronger healing per use.

Hammer

1. Skills feel slow and unrewarding. Either make them faster, or increase their DPS.
2. Clumsy in melee scenarios. It would be nice if it got some sort of knockback or leap backwards. The leap backward effect could be placed on the barrier skill, kind of like League of Legend’s Yasuo’s Wind Wall.
3. The second skill could add a cripple to nearby enemies while retaining the higher damage at range effect.
4. Perhaps chill’s duration could be 1 second higher as well.

Jalis:

1. The taunt skill costs half of your energy bar, has a 1 second casting time, yet it ends before you can even see it (/hyperbole, kinda). That 2 second duration is really, really underwhelming. I do like the idea of a high energy skill, though. Make the taunt last 4 seconds instead, and that might not even be enough.
2. The elite skill’s casting time is too long. Make it 1-1.5 seconds shorter. Increase its energy cost if needed.

Mallyx:

1. The combo costs too much energy. It seems fun on paper having to chain all those condis on you, but you spend so much of your energy that you’re left with an elite skill that barely lasts 3-ish seconds. And that’s no fun, considering how cool the elite is meant to be when used after/ alongside your other self-condi skills.

Can we also suggest changes to elementalist’s signet of restoration’s active, or is Anet only interested in revamping the active effect of Warrior’s healing signet? It’s cool that SoR’s passive effect is being reverted, but it would be even cooler if the active was slightly better.

Players would want to use SoR’s active to escape or survive from a sudden burst. Give it a few evade frames, or superspeed/ haste, on activation. Doesn’t needs to be something big, and sacrificing the passive effect is always a big sacrifice, but at least it would be worth something.

Or maybe have the effect be party-wide? Sacrificing self sustain for party support? Sounds cool. Although honestly, that could very well work for a signet of water’s revamp instead.

The problem with ele’s heals at the moment, is that they are more often times than not, stuck to Ether Renewal. Of course, if Cleansing Water’s trait was reverted…

Feels too mesmery or thief-like, honestly. But maybe we can make it work, like having eles stealth only within fire fields radius, especially those where the flaming animation is clearer. Like flamewall.

Focus trait, “Turn to Flames” -> You gain stealth and regen while within a Flamewall.

Okay, time to suggest more specific changes. I’m only going to address our poor base survival, not every single underpowered skill we have (like most of our auto-attacks).

Based on my reflections:

1. We need more stat-neutral active defenses. Can’t be too close to what other professions (especially mesmer) already have to offer.

• How: mesmer is naturally poor at mobility, and elementalists have the flavor of air and thunder to go for them. Evasion also fits that flavor, but needs restrictions to not overshadow thieves, rangers, etc.

2. We need more stat-driven active defenses that don’t rely on boon/ healing/ defense

• How: Chill is part of our flavor, and it so happens that it synergies well when alongside mobility. Torment could be a possible addition to earth (or outside of it!) not only to make our condition builds more viable, but so that the condition damage stat can also be used with defensive purposes. Finally, retaliation relies on power, and even though we’re tapping into guardian’s/ mesmer’s ground here, it fits with fire aura.

3. We need defensive traits in our offensive traitlines

4. We need our underwhelming survival skills to be made stronger

Mobility, evasion and more defensive air traits

• Ride the Lightning shouldn’t have twice the cooldown if the hit is blocked or evaded. The cooldown nerf was meant to hit it as an escape skill, not as a leap skill, but this detail nerfs the skill in both ways, and makes escaping more unreliable after using it as a leap.
• Ride the Lightning shouldn’t auto-target if the auto-targetting option is on.
• One with Air: Buff super speed’s duration to 2 seconds or 2.5 seconds. Make super speed ignore the speed cap restrictions outside of combat.
• Aeromancer’s Alacrity or new trait: Add evasion to Ride the Lightning, Swirling Winds and Windborne Speed (aka, all #4 air skills). The former would last RTL’s duration, the later two would be a passive 1 second of evasion party wide. Alternatively, add evasion to RTL in Windborne Dagger.
• Zephyr’s Speed: Revamp to add 33% passive endurance regen while in air instead.

Higher access to chill, and possibilities for torment

• Make Fire Magic add condition damage instead of duration. Make Earth Magic add condition duration instead of damage.
• Freezing Gust: Add torment in addition to chill (inspired by GW1’s skill Winter’s embrance) or improve chill duration. Add a radius effect.
• New trait, Winter’s Embrance (inspired by the skill of the same name in GW1), or just a revamped Piercing shards (sorry, Lightning Hammer users): whenever you apply chill, inflict torment.
• Shatterstone: Increase cooldown to 6s, add chill on the effect. Also helps dragon’s Tooth hitting. I might as well as suggest 2 extra stacks of vulnerability, from 4s to 6s, but that’s another matter.
• Shard of Ice trait: signets and arcane skills also inflict 1 second of chill.
• Stop, Drop and Roll: chills foes at the end of dodge roll, or:
• Revamp Stop, Drop and Roll to new trait (Winter’s Embrace name could also be used here): Chill lasts 25% longer.
• Comet to apply torment instead of, or in addition to, dazing. Ground-targetted.
• Hurl from Rock Barrier with slower animation, but applying low-duration torment per hit.

Improving other underwhelming skills

• Lightning Touch (and fire Grab for that matter) with improved functionality to hit more often.
• Dust Devil revamped. Perhaps in order to compensate for its cast time, which makes it impossible to time blind effectively, have the sandstorm move much slower, but apply blind each half a second. So enemies within it wouldn’t be able to hit anything while within the animation.
• Water Blast: have it heal self.
• Gust/ Shockwave: leave the speed, it’s the line effect that needs to be wider.
• Unsteady Ground: This skill doesn’t seems to work the first half second, or maybe it’s the cast time that needs to be finished before the skill is even activated. Lower the cast time, have the effect work the moment the animation triggers.
• Stoning: 1 second extra of weakness, or higher damage. It’s pointless to keep an enemy weakened, if you’re wasting your entire time by doing so and end up dying anyways. Either of those buffs would make the time casting Stoning worthier.
• Lightning Surge: Needs some sort of base defense while channeling. Or create a new mechanic: the more damage you receive while channeling this skill, the stronger it hits for.
• Fire Aura: Add retaliation, or add a stat-neutral active defense, like a block. would make it too similar to arcane shield, though. Perhaps a flat defense boost like frost aura? Or maybe increase the burning duration to 2s in pvp, and 4s in pve, to punish however hits the ele much harder?

Additional forms of defense

• Add evasion to burning speed.
• Elemental shielding trait: increased protection duration.

Leo G.4501:

So now we’ve condensed your suggestion to “Make the enemies easier”?

Easier difficulty, or easier to enjoy the game? Because currently, the cc spamfest is a challenge to enjoyability, not to actual difficulty. :P

Can anyone test a few of those:

1. Is Arcane Power still “bugged”?
2. Are conjures really at exotic-level? I’ve heard from the engineer’s kit topics that the bug fix that was supposed to make bundles at the highest item rarity is bugged and not working. Does that also applies to eles’ conjures?

I can’t test them now.

Those are some of the greatest changes elementalists will get since the game is out, and are going to be extremely important at fixing some of our core issues.

Hearts are terrible “kill x rats” kind of quests.

I hope Anet adds quests that actually create interesting combat scenarios, with any resemblance of structure to tell a short story or express a bit of the world’s lore. You know, like GW1’s quests.

Hearts are terrible “kill x rats” kind of quests.

Justin ODell.9517:

You guys are making some really good points, thanks.

Do you guys think this should be a higher priority than other changes? Why?

I think yes, there’s a lot of benefits behind dueling, be it to incentivize competitive behavior/ training, or to bring the community closer together, or simply as a way to pass time. It also has the bonus of being a game-wide feature (aka, people want it even in pve and wvw). However, until dueling is implemented somewhere in the future, a few tweaks to custom arena to allow for a queue system option could already do wonders (I know I stopped dueling because it was all about who clicked faster at the beginning of each match).

I would not, however, priotize this feature over a build template system.

Maybe after the feature patch is fully revealed, you guys can reveal your next-to-do list of priorities to us, and let us discuss it?

A Guild Hall could also be used as a way to physically represent guild upgrades, making the whole upgrade system less impersonal and more visceral/ tangible.

Make it so each upgrade expands or decorates a specific area of the guild hall.

Some of the guild buffs, instead of being automatic, could also be manually obtainable within the halls. Slightly less convenient, but far more immersive, and clearer. Clearer, in the sense that in the current system, players might sometimes forget that those buffs even exist, considering that the only way to see them (?) is by checking the guild icon or navigating through some menu windows that won’t be of interest to everyone. Having those buffs clickable in a guild hall is, say, easier to understand for the overall playerbase, and thus a clearer mechanic.

Besides, I’m a fan of any mechanic that has stronger visceral impact, but unfortunately, it has the risk of skyrocketting the development’s budget. :P

I agree that this new tool’s ability can potentially become a problem in the future, but so can anything else currently available in the shop, and the shop itself. Yes, even the current, harmless buyable skins might become a problem in the future.

With or without this new mining pick, what ultimately decides if the game is P2W or not, is not this new ability, but how Anet decides to execute it. And so far, their execution is still within the realm of cosmetic fluff or convenience.

If Aegis is given to shield skills (with traits or not), I can see shield becoming very lovely with this trait.

An overpowered profession, being already a problem by itself, should not be twice the problem by being an obstacle to any changes that the game needs. If anything, this is even more of an incentive for Anet to push warrior’s nerfs a bit harder (because, ironically, I’d argue that even a class like the mesmer is getting a bigger nerf out of the announced changes than the warrior itself).

mysterion.1276:

+1 best meta by far finally skill>op brainafk tank faceroll builds stacking.

“Skill” would have been the case if the balance team were to actually dedicate their time to retool existing skill sets and traits and add into them more playing potential, counterplaying, windows of opportunity, clarity and risk/ reward tactics.

Do you see the balancing team do this? Perhaps somewhat vaguely at best, yes, they do, at least as much as they can by opening an excel statsheet and tweaking numbers, which is to say, not much, while core mechanical and design issues keep getting ignored.

JonPeters.5630:

Was hoping saying it once was enough but I’ll say it again. This is a work in progress. Try to give feedback based on the utility and synergy of the trait instead of the numbers. Slow every 3rd critical hit could also be every 10th critical hit. It could be 8s of slow instead of two. Obviously these numbers are an attempt to be accurate otherwise we wouldn’t even give them but a lot of this stuff will go up and/or down before HoT is released.

Jon

I think there are many cases where the line between numbers and utility/ synergy is blurred. In those situations, it makes sense to discuss the numbers, as they might be tightly tied to functionality.

For example, the wells trait. What is the problem with the wells trait? Is it a problem with numbers? Sure, Anet can just up its cleansing from 1 to 2. Or is it a problem with functionality? Ultimately, people are not only discussing the numbers with this trait, but how worth the effect must be to justify waiting 2-3 seconds to get it. What if 1 cleanse is underpowered but two cleanses overpowered? How many wells can a mesmer stack at the cost (or not) of stun breakers and portal? Etc.

This is an example of ambiguity. At least, for me, it’s hard to discern if we’re talking merely about numbers, or if we’re talking about something else as well. Afterall, we are raising potential, problematic scenarios that go deeper than mere number crunching.

That being said, playing with numbers IS fun to some of us. :P

Outside of that, I already posted what I think might be my best contribution on the subject: some of those traits are really exciting, but they feel like they should belong to mesmer’s baseline trait lines/ specs, and not specifically to chronomancer. Chronophantasma and Illusionary Reversion are the two traits that fit that criteria. Chronophantasma, specifically, is like a better version of the new illusion’s trait Persistence of Memory.

I think that you should put at least one of those two traits in a baseline trait line instead (perhaps in illusions, but NOT in dueling, because that one already offers DE), and in its current place, add a shield trait to chonomancer. Illusionary Reversion would be my pick for such change, because it would offer a good alternative to DE for any shatter mesmer build (be it chronomancer or not), and because a chronomancer shield trait would make more sense in its place at master tier, than at grandmaster tier in chronophantasma’s place.

I haven’t gotten the time to test the spear in BW2, but I’m personally not a fan of a weapon with two auto-attacks that tries to do two different things altogether for the sake of an old restriction that no longer exists.

I hope devs are reading these kind of threads.

Dailies were meant to reward players that were just “playing the game normally”, but there’s a few problems that prevent dailies from working like that. One of the biggest reasons for that, is how uneven dailies are.

From my experience, doing gathering + leveling + daily kills, plus a few other stuff like that, can take between 20 minutes and an hour or more, depending on what other side-stuffing you are doing, where you decide to go, etc. That’s fine. You can explore the world while doing dailies, and in this sense, the devs have acchieved what they wanted.

Likewise, recently-added wvw dailies also allow wvw players to get dailies done by just playing normally.

However, doing fractals, or a dungeon, takes about as much time as doing 3-6 other taily tasks. And THAT’s unfair. If someone wants to spend 40 minutes doing a dungeon (cof1 is the exception, let’s ignore that abomination), that player will only get 1/5 of the dailies done (sometimes, depending on the day, 2 or 3 dailies, and sometimes even none). This FORCES a dungeon/ fractals player to do stuff they don’t want to do, which is annoying. There needs to exist more dungeon dailies, or the current ones should be worth more.

Also, dailies are very restricting and punishing to players who can’t log in everyday. There should exist some sort of system that allows you to finish the dailies from the last 1-2 days. That’s because sometimes, depending on each player’s mood and time, there are days where they might not feel playing GW2 much (or just doing pvp or a dungeon or something), and there are days where those same players spend hours in the game. Dailies currently treat those players unfairly: they should get the same amount of laurels for having the same dedication to the game, but they don’t, because the current daily system has a very strict schedule.

Fix those issues, and dailies will truly feel what they were intended to be: a reward add-on for doing normal stuff, instead of something that forces you to do side-stuff and takes away from your precious time.

People are always willing to defend their classes because they get attached to them, no matter how overpowered or underpowered they are.

It doesn’t takes a genius to figure out that thieves are the most popular and easy to use profession at the moment, the “popular” part is not even an opinion, it’s quite clear at every single spvp match.

Listing drawbacks of the thief is not enough, because we’re not comparing the thief with itself. We’re comparing the thief with other professions, who also have as many if not a lot more drawbacks, while not being as effective at bursting as the thieves.

No one else can choose to start a fight with an enemy under half their HP like a backstab thief can. It’s completely unfair, and comparing thievers’ broken skill sequences in combination with stealth to an extremely predictable GS warrior is not a good idea. Warriors are extremely predictable, and far easier to focus fire on that thieves. A dodge, a stun-breaker, an invulnerability skill, an interrupt, anything in this game can counter a GS warrior, and it’s easy to dance against one with a fair chance of winning. GS Warriors are compensated for that with great damage and some movement skills. Their HB must have brutal damage, because it won’t hit often and requires a great deal of skill to hit with all strikes. A thief can take out half of the HP of anyone while under stealth. And no, the loss of initiative is not a comparable drawback to a 45s cooldown (or is it 60s?) frenzy for an extremely predictable and easy to counter sequence.

People who think thieves will suck after a few nerfs and want to switch classes, I have bad news to you. Maybe a Mesmer and a Guardian, which are two of the strongest professions of the game alongside Thief, are a good choice if you like broken stuff, but they also have been getting nerfed. Maybe a Warrior is tempting, but you’ll be surprised you can’t do things as easy as with a thief. Maybe you’re tempting to try a Ranger, a Necromancer or an Elementalist? I have bad news here too. Those three professions are the least common for a reason, but hey, at least they have buffs coming, which might make you happy!

So, ultimately, what’s the biggest difference between my two examples? What happened to Cleansing Fire, and how does it compare to the the readjustment approach applied to my Heartseeker example?

With Cleansing Fire, as I said far above, Anet detected a balancing problem, removed the problem (nerf), and then compensated for it (with a buff elsewhere). With the approach I used for Heartseeker, I took the following steps:

• Detected the problem too (does too many things too easily);
• Brainstormed a way to revert the problem (make the skill harder to master);
• (Somewhere inbetween this, if I was a dev, I would test the skill internally, of course);
• (After testing it,) Consider, with the new tweaks in mind, if a direct, traditional nerf is still worth it or not, or even if a compensation buff would be needed or not.

Basically, at the moment, Anet mostly worries about shaving effects first, and only if they don’t work, do they consider going a bit further and tweak their functionality. This is certainly understandable, as it’s an efficient mean to save resources (leave the more radical changes to the end).

The main idea behind my proposed approach is to look at the skill’s efficiency based NOT on its power level first, but on its skill ceiling, on the difficulty and the circumstances required to achieve that power level, brainstorm new ideas to improve upon that, and if the new brainstormed ideas are accepted within the team, implement them. Nerfing and buffing should be a plan B. A plan B to compensate any indirect nerfs or buffs that come from functionality tweaks, and a plan B to be used when functionality tweaks are not required or no good readjustment solution is found.

“Should we nerf this skill? Should we buff this skill?” This question should only be made after an analysis and a solution is made on the skill’s inherent difficulty to pull off, in my point of view.

As a final note, I’m not saying that Anet doesn’t do this already. However, it’s clear that Anet’s current approach is “shave first, readjust later if needed”, while I think it’s more preferable for it to work instead at a reversed sequence: “readjust the skill ceiling, and then shave later if needed, when needed, or when no solution for readjustment is found”.

Thank you for reading.

TL;DR:

• Many strong (overpowered) or cheap skills can be fixed simply by making them harder to play and to master. Skill ceiling should be itself a balancing tool.
• Traditional nerfs can remove depth out of skills;
• Traditional buffs can create or promote shallow skills;
• Readjustments can add depth to existing skills;
• Readjustments can be more exciting than straight nerfs, and sometimes as exciting as straight buffs, as perceived by the general playerbase, and at a lesser risk of adding power creep when compared to traditional buffs.