Guild Wars 2

I’d like to see the range of lightning flash increased. While running it’s especially hard to gauge it so you stay within the max range, especially when you have to pick a “useful” destination quickly: In critical situations where you want to use it for its main purpose (apart from instant churning earth), to escape.
For comparison: Its range is small compared to RTL and it has much more management overhead and also much higher cooldown.
Suggestion: Increase its range by a factor of 1.5.
Alternative solution: Decrease its cooldown by a factor of 2, making it a more interesting skill in general, outside of very specific builds.

Please, could we get an official statement that this situation is permanent and not gonna be “fixed”? Because I don’t want to spend money on exotic gear that attempts to work around this problem somehow, just to learn that the missing items are going to be added in next patch or something. =P

Dear ArenaNet, any reason you don’t provide this itemization?

You can do 5 scholar + 1 divine for example. But it really depends on what you want to do / your build.

Auroma.9126:

Elementalist:
Whirlpool: This skill’s damage has been decreased by 33%.

Rofl, way to break the finally working skill right in turn. The damage is mediocre at best now, and you cannot do any of these things while it is in effect:
-run
-stop runners
-use any of your skills

and on top of that you’re slow. So basically your opponent just has to get some distance and you’re a free badge.

Why don’t you just put an empty skill slot there saying “not for elementalists”, dear ArenaNet devs. :-p

Hi, I’ve checked the karma/badge vendors and crafted stuff and it seems that there is no gear that provides
-Condition damage and
-Healing and
-Toughness
correct?

wombat.6123:

Antiriad.7160:

Hm I observed a Dolyak once, passing by one veteran mob and surviving, because of its really big hit point pool, I’m surprised to hear that there are mobs that actually pose a danger to them.

Follow an unescorted dolyak from Speldons to Anzalias Pass in EB. They’ll often die due to random mobs attacking them (harpies are the ones I’ve seen killing them the fastest).

Oh I see. I think it is exclusive to EB actually.

wombat.6123:

There’s one good reason to upgrade the dolyak with guards — the guards kill/stop random mobs on the dolyak’s path from killing the dolyak (eg, bats in Pangloss, harpies at Speldon, etc). Without the guard upgrade you’ll often find unescorted yaks being killed by aggro mobs on its route to your team’s keeps and towers.

Hm I observed a Dolyak once, passing by one veteran mob and surviving, because of its really big hit point pool, I’m surprised to hear that there are mobs that actually pose a danger to them.

The only use for mist form is “jumping” off a cliff to delay the enemy zerg a bit, for those who really try to follow you =P

could make maps consisting of single “pieces” that are put together randomly every now and then or might be a really bad idea :-p

Huge siege tonight, nearly everyone turned invisible, including my own character.
And it stayed that way for the rest of my pvp although I was running around alone at times.

Currently you don’t get any reward if you defend a post and are “unlucky” in that no enemies actually show up. This needs to get fixed, so the people who defend and therefore hold the stuff we captured are recognized as heros, not missing out on everything and then feel like idiots.

I was in mist form but got hacked to death by one boss’ sword strike. Has been a while and I forgot in which dungeon it actually was, but I rememeber the wtf-moment and I’m pretty sure it was the “mist form” invuln skill.

Also, why can for example fire traps still kill you if you’re invulnerable? I mean why even use the skills if they just claim they make you invulnerable when they actually don’t? ^^ Mist form makes you invulnerable for 3 seconds. So.. make me.. actually invulnerable please! Why should I waste a skill slot for it otherwise? oO (You can’t even use your weapon skills while in mist form.)

Give elementalists Ride The Lightning as downed state skill too.

Agree it seems like a mistake that some classes can still dish out 4-digit damage via a minion while they’re already in downed state.

And agreed that ele is too easy to finish. :-p

Upgrades are too ineffective. A fully upgraded supply camp lasts virtually the same time against an enemy attack, that is, not at all. In the same manner, the Dolyak escort upgrade is completely useless too, it can still be killed by a single player, even if it takes him 20 seconds longer, who cares. Camp guards can even be pulled in small chunks if you do it carefully.
The only merit is that you can upgrade the amount of supplies Dolyaks carry.

So I suggest that camp guards always stick together and upgrades be MUCH more effective. The dolyak escort should be a champion. That way you’d actually not solo it easily and take some time instead, also giving your enemies a chance to intercept you while working on killing the patrol.
The other camp upgrades should be buffed accordingly. Make them meaningful, not “instead of 2 minutes it will now take you 2 minutes and 10 seconds to clear”.
Also, make them meaningful enough that an opposing 3-player team can no longer easily take a fully upgraded supply camp. I mean, just what would be the reason for even upgrading it in the first place if not that? (Apart from the aforementioned dolyak capacity upgrade).

Also, capturable WvWvW posts can change ownership too quickly, giving it a pretty unepical and silly feeling. But that’s another story.

Was hit for over 13k damage in exotic toughness/hp gear by a thief within about 0.2 to 0.3 seconds.
It were these 3 skills executed “at once”:
Steal, Cloak and dagger, backstab.
(Also, it wasn’t possible to target him with some cc skill in advance to prevent him from closing up, because he either jumped or was cloaked/stealthed, or w/e it is called)

I see, in that case I suggest creating tooltips in unified wording, ie agree that it’s called “chilled” and not call it something different elsewhere.
Especially in the light that there’s actually a skill that does freeze you in an iceblock.

I tried it and it only chills, like sigil of ice, which says in the tool tip that it chills, while hydromancy sigil says in the tooltip that it actually freezes (ie immobilizes) the target.

If elementalists don’t get a weapon switch skill of any sort, then please, Arenanet, just remove the possibility to change equipped weapons in any battleground while out of combat too! So there will no longer be a felt obligation to actually do go through the hassle of manually switching weapons (depending on 1v1/zerg/travel/group scenario that pops up dynamically) because one theoretically CAN do it..
Side note @ThiBash: Unfortunately you do not know the class well.

@Conncept: yep, edited my posting accordingly

correction “heal build”: That’s supposed to be “150..200%”, not “+150..200%”!
(edit: Dunno why the forum wouldn’t let me edit my actual OP yesterday.)

Hi all, I’ve been playing around with different builds, some more extensively, some only scratched at the surface, yet I think sharing the experience is better than nothing.

Also, I mostly play W3, and I try to avoid zerging and instead do 5-man group hit actions, ninja depots etc. So it’s to be seen in that light:

-glass cannon (ie max power/prec/crit):
a lot of fun basically derived from numbers popping up, but you can actually get insta-shotted. Also, better not approach keeps too closely or arrow carts etc will make short work of you.
In general, you will need to use a bunch of defensive skills, mist form, arcane shield, and maybe aoe-blind, to ensure that you aren’t going down very quickly most of the time.

All in all:
Glass cannon actually works best from the back of your own zerg, obviously, where you’re probably not being focus fired right away. Use shield/mist skill to prevent frequent deaths. Stay in the back line!

-healing build (with all cleric items):
You can cure conditions and provide regeneration aura and heal people, and you can do it at 150%-200% efficacy compared to non-healing builds. Still I think this build is not viable. It is too situational and although cleric items will also provide toughness and power along with the healing power, your character will imho currently lose much more than it gains.

All in all:
At the moment underpowered, but can be fun if you focus on supporting mid-large groups. Maybe each zerg should have one of these? ^^

-condition damage build:
Currently from what I gather toughness is used about as much or more than vitality, mostly because condition effects can be purged and are not so common.
This might motivate you to try condition damage builds which bypass toughness/armor.
I only tried this a little bit on the surface, and my quick impression was that the effect seemed too weak in pvp to be very viable. This was mostly because it takes effort+time to apply both earth + burning conditions, they can be purged without too much effort, and most opponents will do somewhat bursty damage to you while you actually wait for their HP to tick down. The problem is that condition damage is “just another damage source”, yet eats up another “stats slot” on your items (ie your items will have +power AND +condition damage, although both are just for dealing damage).
Well, as I said I only tried it out a little bit until I lost patience with this build, so maybe I got it all wrong.

All in all:
Didn’t try it much, but seemed too “slow” for pvp. Also, it eats an item stat slot for “+condition damage”. You might still want +power on your items besides +condition, and then you might turn out a bit redundant.

-tanky build (all toughness/knight — didn’t try power/vit/toughness items due to lacking those):
might be using this along with scepter+focus for dungeons, just to prevent death.
In pvp I found it a bit too slow. Especially as a caster who often just stays at range.
Also, while getting a lot of precision, in turn your critical damage bonus remains kind of low, so the amount of precision will not offset the low power greatly.
In 1v1 you could try to outlast your opponent (using cc skills too), but it will probably rather lead to a stalemate.

All in all:
Found it not too appealing outside of dungeons. :-p You survive, but you don’t do that much.

-balanced build (some toughness, some vitality, much power, some precision, good deal of +crit):
Mostly consisting of Knights and Valykrie items, this build so far worked out best for me. The damage is lower than glass cannon of course, but on the other hand the survivability increases a lot just from some toughness/vitality, which in turn allows for non-defensive skill selections! For example arcane power (to make up for not-too-high precision), arcane wave, arcane blast, or signet of fire are totally fine. And if you go 3x arcane skill, the 20% arcane cooldown trait comes in handy too.
Also this build can be easily finetuned via item upgrades.

All in all:
Somewhat lower damage but greatly increased survivability. Makes up for lower damage by allowing more flexible skill choices (no more need for defensive skills to prevent instant death). -> This has become my favourite build.

Someone stated that devs were mostly playing warriors during beta btw. (Just a side note in reply to any “devs should play X” talk.)

@ OP: the only thing you propose is that elementalists keep switching weapons and traits and skills (the one on the right bar) manually all the time really.
Which is like, most broken game design ever.
You can’t just say “if there is no switch-skill then people won’t switch weapons”, of course they will, nay they are forced to, by the frigging broken class design, read: one which does NOT provide an switch-skill, yet provides elementalists with the ability to utilize different weapons/skills/traits.

Edit: Shouldn’t post too late at night – no clue to whom this posting should be a proper response

Definitely – out of combat weapon switch please!
And with it also a ‘right skill bar’ switch same as currently happens for underwater combat and a trait switch.
Because right now you always have to do all of this carp manually each time and it is annoying as hell and really disrupts your game experience: You just cannot enjoy the game if you have to do all of this stuff all the time.
So yeah, nice suggestion @ OP.

Should be trivial for the devs to change it so enemies take precedence in being rendered over allies.

Noone said 4-shot, I said 4 seconds. And the time span was correct. Of course I could’ve dodged and stuff to prolong the fight, but I was so baffled by the dps output that I just watched in awe (while my auto-attack gave him a faint sunburn in return).
Also, I did as much as expect to get trolled by a thief player for basically just reporting numbers :-p (here on the forum I mean)
And yes, it was only vital shots.

Hi, I got a knights/valkyrie exotic build that aims at survivability/power balance.
However, I only lasted 4 seconds against a thief who just spammed vital shot, nothing else
Thanks for the game Anet, I’m actually sad you don’t take subscriptions so I can’t cancel anything^^ lol..

Just “duelled” an elementalist from Seafarers server, who kept hitting me (note: we were standing still, cause it was on small isles of the jumping puzzle) from well beyond spell max range (he used fireballs and also meteor shower and lava font) while I only got (of course, cause the range was absurd) “out of range” messages. What’s up with that, ANet? :-p

We need WvWvW and Guild Alliances like in DAoC.
Current WvWvW is just so pointless due to almost instant reset of any goal you managed to take (take all lake nodes, wait 5 minutes, all have turned neutral again.. why did you go there again in the first place and collected pearls like an idiot? take supply depot – supervisor buff lasts 5 minutes.. why did you go there again? Is this ADHDvWvW or what?). Basically the only thing somewhat reliable in WvWvW is that when you check borderlands in the morning it’s all red.

I hope you’re also banning the Trading Post html-botters?

Agree, have to boot Windows OS just to play the game, and Windows is just so BAD compared to Linux come on -_- And Valve’s benchmarking experiments even resulted in Linux being considered slightly faster than Windows (after optimizing the gfx drivers – see Valve’s official Linux blog).

I don’t know if the devs actually care to read this thread or if it goes to /dev/null, however, here’s my 2 cents:

1) Optionally, servers could be matched against each other depending on their statistical time zone activity. Eg servers that have very incomparable activities should not be matched against each other. This should certainly lower the severeness of unbalance quite a bit. However, the actual “fine” solution I want to suggest is in 2) and 3) below:

2) The amount of points that is ticking up while holding keeps and stuff in WvW should depend on the ratio of players online in each battleground at that time.
If for example one realm has 50 players fielded and the other realms has only 10 players, then the point gain the stronger realm gets over time would only be very small compared to the point gain if all three realms field equal amounts of players.
This, however, does still not solve fortified/upgraded keeps yet. See 3) below.

3) For each fortification or upgrade completed by a realm that fields much more players while other realms are at that time fielding much less players, the less populated realms will get a damage buff stored that wears off by destroying keep doors/beating key NPCs (keeplords and maybe supervisors/veteran soldiers too).
Example: Realm A fields 50 players while realm B and C field 10. Now if realm A upgrades one position, the other realms will get a +damage buff that will wear off after they destroyed two keep doors/walls and 10 NPC guardians (it counts the doors/walls and the npcs separately). The exact count the buffs adds to “door/wall” and “npc” counters are subject to fine-tuning of course. Optionally, this buff could also be given for deployed siege weaponry (might or might not be cool, and it could in turn become a damage buff for own siege weaponry of the less populated realm instead).
This way, if a realm wakes up and finds all the taken keeps fortified, they will have an easier time to break that “unfairly done” fortifications, until their buff has worn off.

MagnusLL:

Do you have any sources you can link? I’d like to read up on it, like, what was suggested and what was criticised.

Desolation is a server of players of many different nations who don’t speak english natively, while the other servers we were up against were all french, and hence communication was MUCH easier there. Do not underestimate the little quirks in translation. For example someone on Desolation wrote “Greenlake is ok”. Now, could be interpreted as 1) It’s ok to go there for attacking/defending, 2) It’s safe to go there now, 3) It’s safe so go elsewhere. Now if you have 3 different players you might see 3 different actions taken in result to this “information” :-p
Now whether this example is good or not, I imagine on a server where everyone natively speaks french the situation is often MUCH more clear and people know much better what they are supposed to do from reading chat.

Well, and night capping. :-p

My old post was deleted by an admin with a note saying I should post in this thread instead, so here’s a copy/paste:

When I play on friday night, battlegrounds seem good, we’re not doing bad if we have able commandeering people (note how I avoided to say ‘commanders’ as in, gem/pve-paid meaningless titles, gj Arenanet).
However, when I resume playing on saturday morning/noon, ALL OF THE MAP IS CAPPED BY FRENCH REALMS? Like, all of the map I just joined, except one single station which was still our colour!
This is absolutely discouraging, why did I even play on friday night at all? What the heck is going on here, making this possible? It is definitely not a one-time thing where some guild on their server decided to be special, this seems to occur on all french servers, all the time (I can tell because Desolation has had those as opponents a lot lately and I’ve been playing a lot wvw). Please do something, because I don’t really see why I should go to wvwvw anymore (except for mindlessly zerging down opponent players maybe, I’m talking about the strategic aspect here though).

Edit: Like this http://flic.kr/p/dfkMz5

When I play on friday night, battlegrounds seem good, we’re not doing bad if we have able commandeering people (note how I avoided to say ‘commanders’ as in, gem/pve-paid meaningless titles, gj Arenanet).
However, when I resume playing on saturday morning/noon, ALL OF THE MAP IS CAPPED BY FRENCH REALMS? Like, all of the map I just joined, except one single station which was still our colour!
This is absolutely discouraging, why did I even play on friday night at all? What the heck is going on here, making this possible? It is definitely not a one-time thing where some guild on their server decided to be special, this seems to occur on all french servers, all the time (I can tell because Desolation has had those as opponents a lot lately and I’ve been playing a lot wvw). Please do something, because I don’t really see why I should go to wvwvw anymore (except for mindlessly zerging down opponent players maybe, I’m talking about the strategic aspect here though).

Edit: Like this http://flic.kr/p/dfkMz5

Well, I’m actually not a glass cannon build, but had my gear completely made up of Valkyrie and Knight items, and usually I’m doing pretty fine survival-wise. So it’s definitely not 1.
I don’t think I was under 25% health either. However, I cannot really guarantee that, because I just went down in the blink of an eye (that was what actually made me look at the combat log in curiosity, to find out about the insta-kill source), and the combat log isn’t time stamped.

Edit:
Since it seems to me that Elementalists have lowest armor and hit points, so how about giving them an on par damage skill that is comparable to this? I mean why would the class having lowest armor, lowest hit points also have low (or hard to manage) damage output/combos..

Edit 2:
Lmao, I just found this %-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh5zjK7ITpQ
Now I actually don’t have any further questions I think. :-p

I was inspired by an interesting combat log entry that showed I was hit by a Thief skill called “Heartseeker”, for about 8900 damage. What I wanted to possibly discuss, was if there might be room for fine tuning here. Depending on my build as an Elementalist, I’m not entirely sure which kind of stat or -better- stat combination might be the best choice to encourage myself and fellow elementalists to look forward to future encounters involving thieves. Both your professional and amateurish opinions are very welcome. Also I am relatively curious, regarding general game mechanics and as a newbie to the game as many others, how far up damage can actually go. For example, could you get hit by an 11000 heartseeker attack too? Or maybe some other skill? How about a hidden elementalist skill of comparable damage, if it actually exist (it must have eluded me though, in such unlikely case).

I’m on Desolation and in our borderlands 2 opponent keep lords are currently invulnerable, and been since yesterday actually.
I thought there might be admins watching borderlands chat and being able to reset them, but it seems there is no actual “live support”.

Arciel.9650:

do you have some kind of debuff on you?

Combat log doesn’t show debuffs so I can’t check, fight was over almost instantly basically (he hit for another > 6k with Lightning Strike, together with that Chain Lightning) so I couldn’t really see anything apart from checking the combat log afterwards.
Is there actually a debuff that could have caused this? (I only know of those 4-10% vulnerability debuffs out of my head right now.)
Btw on a side note for those who are not familiar with elementalist: Chain Lightning is the staff’s auto-attack skill (ie first skill).

Hi, after suddenly two of the same opponent realm’s keep lords bugged out and turned invulnerable, which was kinda suspicious, this encounter just happened to me:

Now the thing is I’m an elementalist, decked in green+yellow level 80 items that max power/precision/crit damage stats, and also have fire+air traits maxed, so my damage is basically the maximum possible attainable. Together with this I use arcane shield and mist form to negate the downside of being a glass cannon somewhat. Rare items certainly have “better” stats than greens, but only by a few points really (like +2 more power on a piece of armour etc), so maybe the damage output could be increased by a bit further, but not really doubled or anything. Or so I thought, because this just happened to me:
I was hit by an elementalist’s Chain Lightning for 6.1k damage. My own chain lightning hits for around 1.4k and crits for maybe 2.2k or something around that number.
So I was wondering how it was possible that this opponent elementalist apparently deals 250% of the damage I deal?
Mind you this is the first time this happened to me, although I’ve been playing WvW a lot, but this really made me suspicious. Even if he was decked in all orange items I suppose they could not possibly increase your damage by a factor of 2.5?

From dungeon run just now: Repair cost several silver, drops from chests all blues except for 1 green. Just what am I supposed to do with that crap? Why would I ever go there again really? I don’t understand the concept of ArenaNet made dungeons I think. Enlightenment welcome.

Warsoul.2647:

I farmed with 0% MF, 40% MF, 85% MF each scenario same mobs for 30 mins.
0% – 2 blues + 10 white, + 10 grey
40% – many blues (crafting material (325)s and gears) + many whites.
85% – 1 yellow, 2 greens, many blues (crafting materials (400)), 2 whites

So, I though MF is affecting to rarity of the drops

anyway after 30 mins, the grey will start drop only grey, guess anti-farm code.

Rofl, so you go full MF and are happy and then after 30 min you get buttkittened by Anet? Awesome.

Actually any crafter who can make such items should also be able to repair them. Maybe for a small fee. Makes crafters that much more useful.

well I tried it and you get +10% exp, not +10 exp :/

It should also be noted that MF chance might affect chances to find certain grades of rarity differently. It would be nice if someone has more information about this.
Example: 100% MF might double your chance to find blue items, but only slightly (if at all) increase your chances to find greens and yellows. Who knows.

lol yes, I just sell my items and buy new ones instead of repairing them, at least if they’re greens, doesn’t work for yellow items anymore :-p
The loss you make by selling+buying an item is just a few copper (buy new item on TP, vendor old one), in comparison to several silver repair cost, higher than the item’s value.