Guild Wars 2

I agree with the majority of what the OP said…

But I would like to add, why no DEFENSIVE achievements like:

Defend sm 3 times
Defend keeps 10 times
Defend 20 towers
Build 10 AC’s in a sm/keep/tower
Pay for a ugrade at any fortification/supply camp

There are no defensive achievements at all, its no wonder most players assume defense is worthless…

Brutal Arts.6307:

The nightmare is over

The bags with Tomes of knowledge were so much more rewarding than the chests with blues. All in all for people that don’t wvw this will prolly take a while. If you’re in there 6+ hours a day than you’re probably already done.

You’re assuming people go into wvw actively looking to complete the achievements, which is totally off base. I’m a hardcore wvw player and I can assure you that every single one of these achievements except the keeps and towers is ridiculous. The kills are wayy too low for starters, I’m able to get 450 a night on a good matchup. Jumping puzzles should not be tied at all to this, and unless you sit in one spot tagging yaks its very hard to complete it. The fact of the matter is that they made WvW an achievement hunt like any other LS so far and that is wrong, they’re not promoting wvw game play, they’re just promoting achievement hunting.

@OP, good thread and I hope ANet takes it into account because this is actually killing wvw gamplay by having people focus more on completing the achievements rather than playing the matchup.

defending doesnt need nerfs, attacking does -.-
its too easy to ninja thanks to ram mastery. its too easy to overwhelm with numbers thanks to omega dupes.

the rest of your suggestions are mostly good.

How is this up for debate?

Different cosmetic rewards (e.g. a colored finisher) for server rank, and fixed rewards for completing the meta. Possibly throw in some temporary rewards for your server rank as well.

Anything else will lead to even more imbalance than we have now, as people will surely flock to the winning server.

Oh boy, oh boy, I can’t wait for that chest with kitten skin, 100 badges, 10 greens and a rare. Scary to imagine what losers will get.

lol this is wvw, what are rewards? …you think there’s actually going to be something good in that Chest? …. This is the same company that gave all of us 5 Queen Jennas for sticking with them 12 months. (back in Gw1 when I got 5 hydras I could atleast trade some of them for some other 1st-year.)

azizul.8469:

yeah….

WvW reward should be based solely on completing the achievement meta….

that way it would be fair to everyone participating…..

Please, don’t even say that. There are gonna be plenty of people who finish the meta, that barely contributed anything to their server during the seven weeks. But, sadly, they get the same reward as the people who worked hard to get their server to finish where it does.

BTW, I wouldn’t really stress out over the rewards. My guess, they will be a joke. A finisher….not really that special. Whatever else is in that chest, isn’t gonna be special. They aren’t dropping legendaries for first place finishers.

Don’t cry over 2 yellows and a green.

Bhima.9518:

Keiel.7489:

Except if you look at that site again and see that whenever a Ascended Weapon is placed in the main hand it adds an aditional 5% damage (on top of the Sigil of Force). I took a quick look around the site to see if there was a reasoning on it, but didn’t find it.

Assuming that the 5% is calculated erroneously I swapped the sigil of force for the healing stack sigil. And I got a EP of 6933.5 (6.4% power increase) which is slightly higher than my projected .76% per piece, but as I have stated that CritD conversion is odd when it comes to stat calculations because not ever piece of gear trades crit D for the same amount of stats. In the case of Ascended trinkets the stat trade off is slightly better for every piece.

True statement on the crit D with trinkets, but at the end of the day, this was your conclusion and its, unfortunately wrong:
“When Ascended armor comes into play the most anyone will have an advantage over another is 10% if you are looking at Ascended vs Exotics.”
If we are to believe gw2buildcraft, then its already 11% and will most likely go higher once we add in armor

It might but I still stand to say that there is that extra 5% damage increase is a bug and not intended as it only shows up when you have it as the primary weapon set. Looking at the front page of that site it looks like the owner is on a break of some sort but until its determined I wouldn’t say the 11% in concrete. I’m no math major but there should be no reason those stats should add up too 11%EP even with full zerker and the wonky CritD conversions.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

The first point can be easily fixed by the players themselves. The second point is already proven to be false, as there’s a tiny advantage, but not unfair.

No such thing has been proven, and 10% is not a tiny advantage in statistical terms it is significant.

I would be more ok with ascended gear if I was certain it was the last piece of gear ever needed. An acceptable compromise in my opinion would be WvW ascended gear that is obtainable though normal WvW play with the acquisition balanced by rewards from player kills, structures taken, and minor objectives…a fair way to measure a reward defense would also be great. Ascended equipment obtained through WvW should also have the stat selection system that legendaries now have so you can change builds and try new things without a huge amount of hassle.

Ascended Armor when it comes, Weapons, etc, should all be available from WvW. The amount of badges it requires + gold can all be determined – but even if it is very grindy, it still should be available.

Talyn.3295:

It dosen’t matter how much you QQ over the fact Ascended gear is in the game. Its here to stay and alot of us like it and use it. Just because you refuse to do the work to get it doesn’t mean those who do shouldn’t be able to use it. You have no one to blame for yourself, and before you throw that out again, I dont’ champ farm. I play the game.

This is a perfect example of the attitude about ascended gear that I’ll never quite understand.

What exactly do you mean by “do the work”. Is this a game, or a job? Why should I have to spend one second of my time doing things I don’t enjoy doing so I can be at the same gear level as those who “do the work”. I want to launch the game, load into WvW, and start playing. That’s it, that’s all I want to do.

There was a great post on Reddit the other day that does perhaps provide a little insight. The tl;dr version is there are a lot of people playing MMOs that don’t play to have fun; they are addicts who just need achievable goals put in front of them. Maybe like, oh, dailies, monthlies, achievement points, increasingly grindy gear acquisition…

Well anyway, not trying to pick on on you, but the people who do like ascended equipment have to try to understand why many of us don’t like it, and it’s not because we are lazy / stupid / etc.

Guardian Judge’s Intervention = Teleport and still a stun breaker. 1200 range. Applies burning. kitten cd. (can be reduce with a 10 point trait to 36s).
Mesmer’s Blink = Teleport and still a stub breaker. 1200 range with trait. Doesn’t put you in combat. 30s cd. (can be reduce to 24s with a 10 point trait.)
If you’re going to take stun break off of Lightning Flash, take it off those. 900 range, and cures a condition with trait, and/or vigor/regen with trait. Both of these traits lock you into a bunker build. 40s cd. (can be reduce to 32s via a 20 point trait, which a lot don’t take unless they’re running 30 water, because we lose regen/vigor and/or a cleanse. Bunker is commonly either 20-30 water. Some might even do 10-15 water).

I personally (with 20 water) usually take regen/vigor over reduced cantrip timers, because the timer is not a big difference. You might think you get more cantrips used this way, but more dodge and healing is far better. I run dodge from this, from 20 point trait in arcana, and energy on weapon sigil, so that I can get the most out of evasive arcana. It’s when you start getting CC spammed by necro that you start to hate your life. And the 8+s of immobilize that prevents all dodging. If your cantrips are down, and you lack ether renewal, you’re boned. You can maybe remove it while attuning to water. This is the time when you’re being chased by a zerg and die. This is why 20 in earth is so great over 30 water, because you can summon fiery greatsword while switching to earth for stability on earth attunement, and sail away. Hopefully not getting boon stripped and immobilized again in the process. Also, with the might stacking we can put out in d/d, it boosts the condition damage we get from having 20 earth. I use celestial trinkets which boosts it again. It’s hard to guage if I do more damage with 10 in air, because I’m running knights with heal on crit food. My main goal is I want to roam and win 1v1s/ clear camps easily/ out-pace group vs me. This is not asking too much, because obviously we, and other classes do this already. This class is about making choices based on survivability vs most classes, and right now that is cleanse first, stability second, mobility third.

P.S. It’s very disrespectful when you don’t play the class this forum is designated to, and come in here and tell people to “stop crying”. If you review several of the last patches you will see the devs have continually made changes to pretty conjury weapons, and not addressed anything the players were talking about. One with Air is a joke of a talent. It does absolutely nothing.

FrownyClown.8402:

Youkay.5294:

STRanger.5120:

Youkay.5294:

Against warrior: Your mobility skill on daggers is just as good as a warriors, so stop whining about warrior mobility.

You’re kidding, right?
Because it’s not possible that this statement is serious, ever….

Warriors main mobility skills are #5 and #3 on GS, right?

GS #5 dash distance is just as long as elementalist dagger air #4.

And #3 dash distance is slightly better than dagger fire #3.

And warriors dont have any teleportation skills. Eles do.

Or are you talking about other warrior mobility skills?

Ride the Lighting 40 seconds

Lightning flash 40 seconds

Burning speed gives like an additional 1 meter distance from an enemy if they are chasing

Thanks for reply m8.

@Youkay: And now look at the Warriors CDs on those skills and don’t forget to realize that while playing warrior, Rush never stopped me running, as RTL likes to do in the most inappropriate situation….

Youkay.5294:

Against warrior: Your mobility skill on daggers is just as good as a warriors, so stop whining about warrior mobility.

You’re kidding, right?
Because it’s not possible that this statement is serious, ever….

The real question: Why doesn’t anet want us to be able to play bunker D/D elementalist anymore?

Revert the stunbreak on our cantrips nerf. Nobody is using the new stunbreakers you added to other garbage spells for pvp/wvw. Except maybe people new to the class. Nobody is using One With Air either.

Why can we be CC’d in mistform? It says invulnerable right on the spell. Fix this.

Yes. Perplexity runes are extremely cheese. It’s like fighting 5 mesmers at once. We have a bunch of things that remove conditions, but the cds are extremely far apart. These runes apply confusion every couple of seconds.

In WvW if you take off signet of restoration, you can barely stay healed. If you don’t use Ether Renewal, you are going to be cc’d forever. Where is the balance here? There’s no real bunker spec anymore for eles. You ruined it. I’m about as bunker as I can possibly be: stab on earth attunement, remove cond on cantrip and water attunement. Stab, Invuln, port cantrips (If i get rid of any of those for another condi clear I can’t get away from anything.) Fiery Greatsword HAS to be the elite or I can’t get away/catch anything.

What are our options here? Full PVT and do no damage while our enemies laugh at us? Full clerics and still do no damage? Then get spiked by a thief with bloodlust stacks hitting our low vitality? Can we make good use of perplexity runes? No. I use knights with travelers runes for more mobility, more boon duration, more stats. I use Celestial trinkets because clerics lack vitality, and everything else lacks healing power. And yet still I get chain CC’d, and dominated by conditions. Which leads me to…

Why on earth did you incorporate the stacking of immobilization?

How to win as a necro: Corrupt boon/ Fear spam.
How to win as a thief: perma stealth/Backstab.
How to win as a warrior: Heal through everything/Outrun everything.
How to win as a guardian/mesmer/lbow ranger: Zerker gear.
How to win as an anything but ele: perplexity runes. I mean, how do you even damage an engineer running these now?

Does anet even play this game? Do you roam, bro? People complained about our class for so long that the only result is to break it instead of balance it. Then the other classes get buffed, and we get nonsense. Yeah, staff is great. I want to roam. Not with a staff. D/D is fastest mobility, great 1v1, but the bunker aspect took a huge nosedive. I think I covered most of the reason why.

Yeah, ele minors are really, really horrible except air and earth attunement switch bonuses, fury on attune, and water heal (which should be a core class mechanic honestly).

I prefer to get back stun break on Lightning Flash. Or reduced cd on Armor of Earth. Because I dont use Mist form, I have only 1 stun break with long cd, and it really hurts sometimes.

Zelyhn.8069:

Sounds like you should play my builds then!

Yeah, I tried of course, but it’s quite a problem with PUGs, you know, the survivability problems of our class are multiplied while in not-so-optimized group.
Also, I play WvW more lately, ‘couse the season 1, so I’m trying to develop my own builds in there

dante.2864:

This trait is pretty strong in fresh air builds.
Anyone tried superspeed with greatsword elite 3 skill, swear to god that mobility seems like 2500 range and will escape anyting chasing u.

After you spend 1.5 seconds immobile casting GS

+1 Would play it again.

Astralporing.1957:

If i wanted to do a summary why she’s such a cartoonish cliche villain and why it would be better to just forget about her, i couldn’t have done it better. Thank you OP.

Agreed. The Back story just helped to cement how utterly ridiculous & Sue this character is. it’s not surprising that some MMO players like her, she’s the epitome of the teenage Deviant Art style character who is awesome at everything, has the stupid modern-stlye annoying sassy character that is incongruent with the setting & “bucks the system” for some “i’m great & unique” reason like every teen does in their half-informed wisdom.

Farzo.8410:

Farzo.8410:

I hope what Matt Visual and WoodenPotatoes said should happen to her.

She stands there talking, sounding boring and cliche as usual. And suddenly a big Elder Dragon just lands on her, crushing her or impaling her on its claw, or whatever.

- and that’s how Jormag/Kralkatorrik/Bubbles/Mordremoth/Primordius is introduced.

I think I’d clap for that perfect landing. Waving the signal ligts could be a part of her final fight.

would be amazing. Although they’d probably try to play the scene off like Scarlet new it would happen the whole time & wanted it so & thus making her death yet another thing that makes her “so awesome”.

I’ll pick on you OP since you decided to post such a loaded topic (for me).

Ashadow.6874:

Scarlet is the best enemy we could possibly have at the moment, aside from maybe the Elder Dragons.

Seriously, she rejected her place in Pale Tree’s dream, decided that only SHE would decide where or what her path was. She studied for eight years in the Grove, with Sylvari engineers and realized she wanted more.

This is of course, a subjective opinion, but compared to many, many characters in literature (all literature), she is objectively badly written. When you start off your character without a basis for her motivation, you should stop, rewind and rethink what made her take the action she took.

No exposition was made as to why she rejected the Pale Tree. Without some fundamental conflict that the reader/player has to know before the character acts, Scarlet is no more than a token villain thrown in because “we need a villain”.

Ashadow.6874:

So she went to Hoelbrak….snip.

So she moved on, and began to study under a gladium of the Iron Legion. snip

She went to Rata Sum, and she wasn’t just accepted in automatically…snip.

Afterward, she joined the Inquest…snip.

After she was thrown out, she learned alchemy from the Hyleks…snip.

Headmaster Omadd, seeing her potential even tracked her down and offered her a chance to the see more of the Eternal Alchemy, to know as much as possible.

Think about what you’ve written here in the scope of Guild Wars lore and the relative youth of the Slyvari. Explain why would one of these groups/people accept Scarlet into their trades, have enough time for her to master said trades and then never mention anything to anyone about this virtuoso who just so happened to move on from their cultures within the current timeframe of Guild Wars 2.

Ashadow.6874:

She wasn’t just some “instant genius who excelled at the Asuran colleges and was suddenly a genius.” She worked hard, she persevered, she pressed for every grain of knowledge she could. Scarlet is dedicated, and dangerous.

Even the Pale Tree tried to convince Scarlet to stop, even the Pale Tree is worried about what she knows, and what she is doing.

This is an example of exceptionally obtuse writing (not from you OP). We have nothing to have a basis that she did indeed, “work hard” or persevered through anything. If she was present in our personal stories for example, and was a ‘prodigy’, where we as players saw her potential, saw her disappear, her re-appearance would have a tremendous impact.

As it is, she’s, to me, the very epitome of a “Villain Sue” and a lazily written one, again, not being mentioned once by any of these groups she joined and excelled at.

It’s perfectly fine to enjoy a badly written character, it isn’t fine to pretend that character is anything else hoping that further ‘light’ will be shed on her motivations.

4/3 New Vid: 10/25/30/0/5

Build

Always 1080p.

Nothing special. Figured I should post something since i’m on the forums a bit.

Just me having fun.

**Note: I don’t PvE. I don’t pretend to know anything about PvE. I don’t care about PvE. This isn’t to say you can’t use these in PvE, but rather I have never used them in PvE.

I WvW, I PvP, I GvG.

Support Builds

Hammer/Staff Zerg/GvG Build

Green Numbers & Random Dodges Build

I Heal

Video’s

1) Green #s

2) Almost

3) Staff/Hammer

4) Ruins & Briar

DPS Builds:

Zealous Defender (Updated) Build

Tanky / Zerg Build

Defiance Build

Hammer/Mace+Focus Bursty AoE Build

=]
_________________________________________________________________

Video’s

1) (Old) Zealous Defender. Zeal & Valor build

2) (Updated) Zealous Defender

3) Zerg Tank – Bust’n Zergs

4) Zerg Tank – Defending Durios

5) Defiance

6) Bursty AoE

At first when I saw the patch notes, I was leaning towards positive. However, after letting things sink in, I’m still leaning towards positive. True, the changes to staff have mostly been to our secondary skills and not our primary (where most people feel the main issues lie). However, ArenaNet has shown that not all of our concerns fall on deaf ears.

Taking Meteor Shower for example, it’s clear that ArenaNet listened to players that felt you couldn’t easily hit things with it. The conjures also recieved buffs to the point where I feel that nobody can complain they’re not useful anymore. Shockwave’s speed increase made me wonder why they didn’t change Gust as well, but when I checked ingame the skills are now more alike so it makes sense. The change to Unsteady Ground is rather interesting because it gives use something completely new (to us). Finally, stuns, the bane of our existence, have been reeled in a bit. The sigil fix essentially takes nearly a second off the most problematic stuns from stunlock builds. Launch and Basilisk Venom can now be countered effectively. Given that we’re the most vulnerable of all professions to stun, this is good news.

With the buff on burning speed and the superspeed on One with Air, staff eles can now properly disengage! Gust an enemy (use chill/static field/shockwave/whatever to actually hit them), switch to fire and roll backwards. Turn around and run away! Easy right? Well, not easy maybe but at least it’s possible.

But there are some concerns. For one thing, immobilize now stacks. Where immobilizes would be wasted pre-patch, they now all stack (or at least up to 5). With immobilize being the nasty younger brother kicking us in the groin while older brother stun holds us down, this is a tough blow. For most 1v1 cases, this won’t be much of an issue but when a group decided to gang up on us with multiple immobilizes, we’d better have our Windborne Speed ready to cleanse them off. Thieves even got an extra immobilize and they hardly needed help against us, but at least they’re removing less boons from us. Hopefully protection and regeneration will save us now that they’re not gone all the time.

One thing in particular that I’d like to comment on is the AoE & block nerf. While it’s true that this can hurt our damage potential, you’ve gotta ask yourself where this will matter. In PvE and sPvP, you’re unlikely to hit more than 5 targets (and if you do, your position is either good or bad enough that hitting another target wouldn’t affect the outcome of the fight). The only thing affected is WvW zerg fights. It’s sad, but not something we cannot handle. After all, Meteor Shower can still hit up to 120 targets, and we got an additional CC skill to compensate.

So to sum things up, I think overall this patch has done more good than bad and it’s certainly not worthless. The new Fireball radius is huge, giving us much more dps in dungeons (on the thrash you do not skip of course). The main issues (casting speeds. projectile speeds, etc.) are still out there however and some input from a dev on those would be very welcome. Overall though, I think I like this patch. At there very least, we got a new toy!

EDIT: One thing I forgot to mention is the loss of cripple. While this is hardly a ‘crippling blow’ given the low duration unsteady Ground usually gave, it’s still something that could harm us in the long run because we’re all about moving faster than our opponent. I guess we have to focus on chill now.

Mbelch.9028:

Glad to see some support here.

I saw one good elementalist (Thibash) mention leaning towards thinking positively on the patch.

I can’t say the same. I appreciate the quality of life changes, but they helped everybody. Warrior-buff Guardian-Buff Thief-Buffed and let’s not even mention Mesmer 18k/Sec falling Chaos Storm. (Yes a glitch but it runs salt in the wounds we have)

I’ve thoroughly tested the changes that would impact a melee ele and I’m just very disappointed. The haste trait is POOR. It would only be less poor if it was a “super speed” boon which at 2 seconds we could boost with BD equipment.

As the super speed is now though, you swap into air and it is gone before you can swap into fire to utilize it well. There’s nothing in air but auto attacks to use it with. And what could you get off with that buff, two autos? Also almost all eles start fights in air, so you have no starting bonus to a fight nor an incentive to switch things up.

As for conjures— there are some nice PVE changes here. Good for PvE. Conjures will never be viable in WvW in their current form because let’s face it: we have ENOUGH skills. Some players can barely handle 25, let alone more. Lastly because they completely lock us out of our mechanic. The only benefit would be using each skill on the bar once then chucking the other 10 charges because you can’t wait around as an ele in a fight.

Just sadness has come from this patch for ele. That is all.

If I have 25 skills I should have access to:
1) Skills that apply all types of conditions (bleed, blind, stun, daze, cripple, immobilize, etc.)
2) Skills that heal me
3) Skills that cure conditions
4) Burst damage skills
5) Sustained damage skills
6) Skills that bolster my defence/reduce damage

I should not need conjured weapons to do anything. They are superfluous to me outside of very specific situations (ex. frost bow 4 in AC).

In order for me to even consider using them, they will have to be done the exact same way as engineer toolkits are done. Available on-demand without charges or cooldowns to summoning them.

In order for me to be happy with elementalist skills without the conjured weapons they have to perform on-par with that of other classes. Right now ele is sorely lacking. We have many tricks up our sleeves, but they’re little more than puffs of smoke when it comes to serious fighting. Our only option is to drop all of our abilities in the best chain we can, blowing all of our cooldowns and utilities in the hopes that the target dies, because otherwise we’re running around like headless chickens waiting for something useful to unlock again or some big, butch warrior carrying a giant sword in one hand and the unspeakable object we’ll later be receiving in our backsides out of gratitude for his timely rescue.

Glad to see some support here.

I saw one good elementalist (Thibash) mention leaning towards thinking positively on the patch.

I can’t say the same. I appreciate the quality of life changes, but they helped everybody. Warrior-buff Guardian-Buff Thief-Buffed and let’s not even mention Mesmer 18k/Sec falling Chaos Storm. (Yes a glitch but it runs salt in the wounds we have)

I’ve thoroughly tested the changes that would impact a melee ele and I’m just very disappointed. The haste trait is POOR. It would only be less poor if it was a “super speed” boon which at 2 seconds we could boost with BD equipment.

As the super speed is now though, you swap into air and it is gone before you can swap into fire to utilize it well. There’s nothing in air but auto attacks to use it with. And what could you get off with that buff, two autos? Also almost all eles start fights in air, so you have no starting bonus to a fight nor an incentive to switch things up.

As for conjures— there are some nice PVE changes here. Good for PvE. Conjures will never be viable in WvW in their current form because let’s face it: we have ENOUGH skills. Some players can barely handle 25, let alone more. Lastly because they completely lock us out of our mechanic. The only benefit would be using each skill on the bar once then chucking the other 10 charges because you can’t wait around as an ele in a fight.

Just sadness has come from this patch for ele. That is all.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Too early to tell if conjures are still worse than other utility skills.

They’re never going to be as good as they should be until they function like an engineer kit on a longer activation CD. Locking yourself out of your weapon skills/attunements cannot be justified if the utility slot you have that function in has an activation time that disrupts the flow of combat and requires awkward positioning to take advantage of more than once. Anet made a gimmick when they made conjures shareable.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

You guys remember when warriors were kitten in PvP and eles were OP? That’s just how meta changes work. And that’s just sPvP, enjoy running a warrior in PvE or zerg WvW and being useless all the time.

The difference is, ele wasn’t OP because it was a combat powerhouse. It was OP because it could harass far point, hold out until it’s 4 stun breakers were gone and then RTL away, heal up and come back. Nobody had trouble forcing eles to run away, they just couldn’t kill them because they had too many escapes. This one little niche was OP because it basically forced 2 people to go back to their close point in order to kill the ele, leaving the rest of the map 4v3 while they did so. Then he just respawned and started the whole thing over again.

ANet responded by nerfing the ele’s ability to run away and their ability to stay and win the fight (which they already sucked at).

Warriors have been buffed to a point where they’re OP because they destroy everyone and don’t die.