Guild Wars 2

sophiewhite.3149:

Topher.5631:

Ragion.2831:

Topher.5631:

It isn’t pure cancer. It has a counter, but it is more difficult to use than others so peeps call it OP. I do not play condi thief.

In reference to the photo, what were the team comps lol

Wat? . O this is a good one, what exactly is so difficult about pressing 3 and V?

Haha, it isn’t difficult spamming Death Blossom and Dodge.
Now give me the quote where I said it was hard.

“but it is more difficult to use than others”
heres your quote.

He meant the counter to condi thief is more difficult to use than the counter for other builds. In my experience the best counter to condi thief is just force team fights it can’t contribute in very well.

Exciton.8942:

In PvE, ele is the best dps while still having good utilties. So a popular pick for sure.
In both WvW and PvP, ele is mostly used as a healbot. It is a strong healbot but it definitely starts to feel boring now.

Only top DPS against a stationary target with a large hit box or against a stationary target at 1200 hundred range. Any other situation it is out classed. Utility is also wholely unremarkable being mostly just some group healing and fields\finishers that are unreliable due to all the useless fields every other class spams.

The reason that build can’t be used any more is because celestial amulet and durability runes were completely removed from pvp. You could still use that stat combo and the rune in other areas of the game however you won’t be able to access them till level 80. For leveling anything can work. Air is very nice for the movement speed buffs damage and fresh air once you can get that. Arcane provides nice utility and is generally fun, then fire is for damage or water for more survivability. Earth isn’t really useful out side of pvp.

Troll the crap out of people in edge of the mists.

I suspect trolling but not quite positive. If trolling, then many people took the bait.

PP thief is a solid duelist build and has great burst for +1’s. The issue with it is that it lacks cleave, so it doesn’t do much in a team fight oriented meta like we currently have.

chibbi.3706:

I realize i’m probably very biased against rev as a warrior player (base warrior, which makes it even worse).

But tbh I find DH rather enjoyable to fight. They have obvious tells to both their offense and defense, and if you play well they eventually run out of defense. Druids for example are a LOT more annoying to fight imo.

Yep assuming your vanilla warrior is power based this is at least a bit of scissors complaining about rock while finding paper fine. For instance someone who only plays condi Mesmer would see dh and warrior as much more op then Rev. Power war/guard are scissors, Rev is rock, condi mes/condi war are paper.

mrauls.6519:

Simonoly.4352:

Sins.4782:

Just think, if this was on anything other than rev, both players blowing their highest damaging skills in a row on each other would have resulted in both taking huge damage.

This was my initial reaction.

THIS! So much this!

Literally every class except necro can unload major burst damage against an opponent while in some sort of damage immunity.

Mesmer: Blurred frenzy/distortion, plus shatters.
Ele: obsidian flesh.
Engi: Rocket charge, shock shield
Thief: many high damage attacks that also evade
Ranger: Signet of stone
Guardian: shield of courage
Warrior: whirlwind attack and endure pain/berserkers stance

Grace of the land, spotter, frost/sun spirt, and glyph of empowerment are why druid will be guaranteed spots in raids for a very long time. One would imagine that taking a healing oriented build over dps focused one would boost suitability at the expense of some potential dps but with druid this isn’t the case. Druid buffs allow the group to have the best of both worlds with no downside. Druid can simultaneously provide adequate healing for a group while boosting their damage so much that replacing them with a more dps focused build would be a net dps loss. Ultimately druid is brokenly op for raids in how much support they provide both offensively and defensively.

Both of those bosses have passive environmental damage ticks which I am pretty sure will pop the aegis. Sabetha doesn’t have the passive damage ticks but keeping aegis intact would be tough.

XGhoul.7426:

Kervv farmed Chaith in 1v1s to always decap him (sometimes beat him outright and always force a +1) and they never had a good chance to replace someone in the fight to 1v1 a mesmer with a theif teamcomp so they were always kitten. If they replaced someone else to 1v1 kervv they lose out on their teamfight potential, and 55 always took advantage of that.

This was their biggest issue. Astral didn’t really have anything to counter the mesmer far push. Obviously the necro, and power rev were not viable choices for this role. Ele could have been used to force a stalemate, but portal allows mesmer to win any ways since they can go help in the team fight and just get a free decap if wakkey followed. That leaves toker, who could probably win the 1v1 eventually after being decapped and likely full capped, or chaith which ultimately didn’t work out. A ranger would have definitely helped in this instance, but chaith on ranger just wasn’t cutting it.

BlackBeard.2873:

PadreNike.1803:

BlackBeard.2873:

Revenant: Evade,evade, evade, teleport, block, block, block, invuln, invuln, invuln….HA, there is 2/3 of your life with 1 skill! I am so good!! Just pls keep those condis away from me!

TIL: rev has an invuln xD

You actually get invuln frames from unrelenting assault (your enemies see “invuln”, IIRC even though its supposed to be an evade), and Infuse light is an invuln (in practice, except even better b/c it turns damage into healing).

Or… you could nitpick more!

Regardless of what the opponent sees, unrelenting assult doesn’t give invuln frames. The revenant will still be affected like things such as auras, wards, and retal which true invuln would negate, but evade does not.

Mr Godlike.6098:

Skittledness.5106:

Ele is still amazing and almost every top team is now running one pls

This is false. Most ESL teams dropped ele for druid… at least wining ones.

Don’t worry, he knows , he is in Never Lucky. So either the meta has changed back to using ele in top tier since the qualifiers or he is just trolling around. We will find out this weekend.

steve.2945:

ele needs tons of reworks. weird how guardian and some other classes ( can’t remember which ones) had new skills added, redone and reworked. While ele is currently a fish out of water waiting for some reworks and skill changes.

Flame strike just got a rework, can’t you people ever be happy?

Ele is definitely the least popular class right now in my experience and it is obvious why. Anet has pigeon holed them into a pure support role that few people found interesting, and then proceeded to heavily nerf it so that it is neither a fun, build, nor a strong build so why bother playing it? It is still far stronger than more offensive ele builds, so most people just re-roll to a class that can still be fun and effective rather than work with something that is not fun and sort of effective, or fun but very ineffective. Of course fun is subjective so I guess some people enjoy auramancer.

They have only ever said that a team of 5 solo q’s would never be matched against a 5 MAN PREMADE. 4 man premades have always been considered fine to go against 5 solo q’s since team q/soloq merger. Ultimately the matches were pretty balanced, and you even won 3/4 I just don’t see this as something to complain about.

apharma.3741:

ArthurDent.9538:

ArthurDent.9538:

My predictions are that for pvp heal botting will be nerfed heavily, but still be left far and away the best thing you can do with ele in that format. For pve they will nerf fresh air builds by toning down air overload so that we can all go back to only camping fire with staff all of the time in pve because there shouldn’t be 2 competitive options.

I have hated just about every relevant blance change they have made for ele since hot was released. As a result I have stopped maining it, and it is probably my least played class in pvp since the start of season 2. This is why I am quite cynical about any future changes.

I would like to necro this thread since it contains conclusive proof that I am a psychic since everything I predicted came true.

Yeah 100% correct on the exceedingly obvious nerf ele healing.

100% incorrect on the “they will nerf fresh air builds by toning down air overload so that we can all go back to only camping fire with staff all of the time” as they’re both hit box size dependent as to which gives the higher DPS as well as the mechanics of the fight, stationary or moving.

From a raiding perspective fresh air is more or less dead. It currently loses on dps to a thief under optimal circumstances and doesn’t really provide any good utility to make up for it other than wash away the pain which is only a bit better for the group then thief healing venom. Then the more sub optimal the circumstances become, the more thief dps out classes fresh air such as thief not needing to worry about moving targets, not needing to worry about canceling a key skill from needing to dodge, or not having high up-time on alacrity. The only reasons to take ele in raids now are if the target hit box is big, you need ranged dps, or you want a heal crutch with the water camping build. In all cases you take staff.

ArthurDent.9538:

My predictions are that for pvp heal botting will be nerfed heavily, but still be left far and away the best thing you can do with ele in that format. For pve they will nerf fresh air builds by toning down air overload so that we can all go back to only camping fire with staff all of the time in pve because there shouldn’t be 2 competitive options.

I have hated just about every relevant blance change they have made for ele since hot was released. As a result I have stopped maining it, and it is probably my least played class in pvp since the start of season 2. This is why I am quite cynical about any future changes.

I would like to necro this thread since it contains conclusive proof that I am a psychic since everything I predicted came true.

As a rev main I kind of like the guardian meta. Retri rev still counters dh’s pretty well plus the swarms of dragonhunters largely drive away the most dangerous rev counters: condi mesmer, thief, and condi warrior. I just wish I could get a reason to play non heal-bot ele again.

You have zero on demand stun-breaks and no lightning flash. A good team will simply wait for you to swap out of earth or burn obsidian flesh, then chain cc you till death. EZ PZ.

Stack protection and heal through damage. This is the ele way. This is how it has always been. This is how it shall always be.

Yep power rev can faceroll an offensively speced ele but so can every other class at this point so it is more of an ele problem (or every other class) than a rev problem.

I ended up on the pre HOT twitch stream when Phanta and Hugh were showing a preview for stronghold. We ended up beating them pretty handily which was nice.

xKratos.4758:

Cannot pick both Addrenal health and Passive endure pain at the same time.

Adrenal health is a minor trait in the defense line which is the line that passive endure the pain is in so, this would just make passive endure the pain completely banned

Just roll a dragon hunter. If you still have trouble against condi mesmer on a dh then you should probably git gud.

What will be the stance on revenant? The whole class is HOT however if by non Hot you really just mean no elite specs, then perhaps non herald revenant could be allowed. Extending off of that would non-HOT include HOT released runes sigils and amulets, or once more are you just excluding HOT exclusive profession mechanics?

Cecilia.5179:

Lucentfir.7430:

Cecilia.5179:

How was this not a thing last season? They didn’t even buff the traps.

Because Eles got taken out of the meta thanks to nerfs on their healing support and cleric amulet removal.

Ok, so it’s a “the new apex predator” kind of thing?

It is the result of simultaneously nerfing a build’s counters while buffing the build at the same time. And yes the number of dragon hunters in ranked q right now is astronomical.

Judging from the wts qualifiers, engi is the new rezmer.

Fortunately for mesmers, they along with druid and to an extent warrior, are still reserved at least one slot for virtually every boss of every raid group. Something that none of the other 6 classes can say.

From what I saw denshee ran the traditional heal bot build with menders over clerics for TCG. The other teams I saw didn’t use ele. TCG should have gotten second except they had a dc which regardless of 2nd or 3rd would be a substantial step down from when they dominated season 2 finals. I wouldn’t be surprised if they change their comp for wts.

Warrior

Ubik.8315:

Supreme.3164:

It’s the foundation of every PvP forum of every MMO game ever released, zealously followed by your average player with no fail at every turn, it goes like this:

-Class I play is underpowered
-Class I beat easily is balanced
-Class I barely beat needs a shave
-Class that beats me is OP and needs huge nerfs

Fixed that for you.

To be fair, most non-mmo games don’t have classes competing against each other.

It does seem to be hitting more then normal. It used to be able to hit up to 5 times with a bit of luck and perfect positioning, now it hits that number regularly, sometimes more.

Ele is also currently being heavily helped by power revenant being severely handicapped by some bugs such as stuck bug on nearly every unrelenting assault and facets randomly going off. Once those problems are fixed magi ele will need to worry more about another hard counter class that can easily chase it down and kill it unless it gets peels. Menders doesn’t fair much better in this match up.

Kolly.9872:

Learn how to play glass in a bunker meta and stop QQing. As a thief I can give you some suggestions.

Step 1: reroll to litterally any other class

Step 2: Take 5 minutes to read tool tips, and reach a higher level then you would after hours of trying to figure out how to make a glassy ele work.

Thief has the tools to thrive playing glass against other glassy builds, ele doesn’t. It has both the most telegraphed attacks, and the worst natural survivability of all classes which is a terrible combination for burst.

For the record I play every class and despite my ele having roughly 40% of my total matches it is my worst class right now because it is just weak.

Problem with chrono and fractals in my experience is the boon thieves instability. They stack up a ton of quickness…… and it’s gone

Regon Phoenix.8215:

Worst class right now, and probably ever

lol, hyperbole much with the ever part.

Jourdelune.7456:

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Druids are not efficient bunker/point holders or even team support honestly. They require much stealthing to survive on point “which inevitably losses nodes” and focus so much on self sustain that they don’t really get the leeway to heal the party in spvp. They also must bail points entirely to survive when 2v1 focused. Druid is a terrible team support bunker spec but a great side node 1v1er.

Problem with the bunker druid meta is Thief and REV kill them. A bunker should be a counter to DPS.

In that case, it’s not. Bunker druid is a counter to Condi burst users.

It’s still “bunker” but not the kind of ROCK we use to find. It’s a Rock made of Paper.

Druid has the advantage in both those match ups. But they still need to play at a decently close level to their opponents to win as it should be. A build shouldn’t allow you to succeed in your match ups even if you are largely out played.

Standard dps raid builds work well in fractals. Swapping fire for water is a good option for survivability as you realize but isn’t needed.

The one thing you really need to look out for and make sure your group knows this is that your party can’t use retaliation at all. Dps ele both staff and fresh air get absolutely obliterated by retaliation on the boss because it was stolen from a party member with the boon thieves instability. Stopping attacking and spamming all of your healing skills will not save you from retaliation when you have an air overload, glyph of storms, lightning orb, and wildfire all simultaneously ticking for retal damage against you. So if bosses end up getting retal, make sure you tell your group to remove it from their build.

Removing retal may even include removing any blast finishers from rotations because if you blast a light field, every one gets retal and there are tons of light fields to worry about in the current meta. Another thing that helps is joining groups with at least 1 necro in them, as it will most likely be condi, and scepter auto attacks are pretty quick at corrupting boons hopefully taking out retaliation quickly. This is far from a reliable method by I normally don’t get bursted down by retal while playing with my necro friend.

Another way to easily make thief the top dps class for boss is to make the boss fairly mobile, and have frequent dodge or die type attacks, and have secondary mechanics where high mobility benefits. Mathias is a good example of this type of boss.

He moves around a lot making staff ele damage pretty poor from not staying in lava fonts. Additionally the hadoukens will one shot an ele if they don’t dodge which means they can’t reliably finish channeling air overload which is a huge dps loss when canceled.

On the other hand thief basically loses no damage from having to dodge, loses no damage against a moving target, and even has superior mobility to drop off poison and corruption quickly to get back into the fight. The only way ele can compete dps wise in this fight is that staff has range to work around bombs, tornados, and spirits which aren’t that hard to avoid as a thief in melee range.

lucadiro.4519:

Tomiyou.3790:

Supreme.3164:

Wolfric.9380:

ele and engi are basicaly desinged as hybrids ….
But what we sugest are buffs to unused things to make a more damage oriented ele possible by giving up a chunk of its support (r.g. regeneration on aura traded for shout cooldown with might and weakness) Which will lead to more offense instead of regen and vigor. I am even not shure if this will change anything in the meata and bunker will stay only top meta, but it will open a window to try something not pure aurabot.

Problem is the support on ele is mostly related to self-sustain through boons and healing, you can’t really lose support without losing sustain in the process

If I’d have to rank our traitlines from 1 to 6, best to worst :

1) Water
2) Tempest
3) Arcana
4) Air
5) Earth
6) Fire

Air is without doubt our best dps line, moderately good traits from adept to master with a valid choice of GM and master

Earth is number #4?? Wat. Without earth 50% of the builds don’t even work. If you ask me, Earth is below Tempest, then Air, then Arcana. Fire is crap yeah.

Agree

It is weird to make this ranking because arcana is still arguably our strongest traitline aside from tempest, however it has very poor synergy with tempest, and tempest is just so strong, with elemental bastion and all of the shouts, especially wash the pain away. So without tempest, arcana is 1st or second, with tempest, it isn’t all that great. This means it will be interesting to see how the next elite specialization plays out, as it may have good synergy with arcana, which is what I am hoping for as I love the trait line.

My predictions are that for pvp heal botting will be nerfed heavily, but still be left far and away the best thing you can do with ele in that format. For pve they will nerf fresh air builds by toning down air overload so that we can all go back to only camping fire with staff all of the time in pve because there shouldn’t be 2 competitive options.

I have hated just about every relevant blance change they have made for ele since hot was released. As a result I have stopped maining it, and it is probably my least played class in pvp since the start of season 2. This is why I am quite cynical about any future changes.

You can play it in pvp in the sense that you can equip 2 daggers and enter a match. However it is woefully under powered at the moment. Just run a cleric build with d/f or staff, re-roll, or accept that you are handicapping yourself and your team.

Razor.9872:

Lucred.1802:

Razor.9872:

I kill Diamond/Legendary Tempests every day…

If I kill the unkillable…what does that make me?

And with how many other people on your side? 3v1/4v1 at diamond/legendary, yeah they’re gonna go down. At lower ranks maybe not. 2v1 happens occasionally. I’ve never seen anybody other than a thief 1v1 an even halfway decent tempest, and it doesn’t happen regularly because it requires an element of stealth (which, admittedly, the thief is built for but is still situational).

Assuming equal skills of all players involved no class should be able to consistently 2v1 any combination of other classes, and even a highly skilled player should not be able to 3v1/4v1 mediocre players of any other class combination reliably.

It’s true that I face Tempests in teamfights more often than not (that’s where they naturally head towards). However, I have killed plenty of them on far-point 1v1 as Reaper, Scrapper, and Daredevil. That being said, I can’t imagine doing so as a Berzerker, Herald, Druid, or Chronomancer.

It is very easy on herald which was the class I mained for season 2 and 3 up through legendary. Chrono can easily kill or at least force a decap with moa. Power warrior similarly can rip an ele to shreds, by taking advantage of eles terrible stunbreaker access with headbutt and shield bash. Condi warrior will have a bit of trouble breaking through diamond skin other wise it is an easy kill. And druid is a stalemate though if they run glyph of tides and long bow they can decap reliably. So that is 7 classes that can solo kill or at least decap an ele assuming similar skill level. On the other hand the only one that ele realistically stands a chance at decaping is thief, though they are much more likely to end up dead than the thief. Yet ele is the op one hmmmm. Even dragon hunter can decap eventually just with heavy light procs and heavy on point pressure from traps.

Edit: I take it back sort of, ele can decap most things with tornado, but I haven’t seen that skill used aside from by engineers in a longer time than I can remember by anyone competent.

I am predicting season 4 will either be more heal botting, or they nerf the survivability hard without compensation making ele completely useless.

Just a matter of time, it will happen eventually.

Depends if you are looking at pve or pvp. In optimized pve conditions, ele has substantially higher damage. But in pvp they will never be able to both survive and land a respectable percentage of that damage, so in pvp rev does much more damage since it is safer and and easier to land.

Staff Auto attack only out dps’s vault spam if you have quickness, since vault is unaffected with it being an evade.

How about we pose the counter question of why is it ok for every other class to be unkillable for eles?

Bunker ele isn’t even that great at solo bunking points. My power rev will generally solo decap bunker eles in less than 30 seconds, and possibly completely kill them a little bit later, foefire points being the obvious exception. Most other classes can hold the 1v1 cap much longer simply because I can’t just go ham on them or they will kill me. They are subsequently more likely to keep the point indefinitely since rev has a lot of fairly even or disadvantaged 1v1 matchups. Eles are the one 1v1 matchup I know I won’t lose and it normally doesn’t take too long to get what I need.