This game is designed in a way where each class is expected to fend for themselves. This is the case in group PvE dungeons as well. If you can go in with berserkers and 5 sigs and keep yourself up then I say go for it. But don’t start yelling at Elementalists and Guardians to spread heals around etc.
The Warrior is also in a unique place in this game because of how absurd your PvE damage is right now. Granted you will see some die-off if you spec into healing shouts, your damage output is still better than most every other class out there. So if you want to spec into a more utility/defensive spec I wouldn’t be concerned about the fact that you aren’t bringing enough damage to the group.
This is the problem I find with most warriors in this game… they feel they’re a DPS Class and their survivability rests on the shoulders of the 4 other people dumb enough to come along for the ride. Each class is self-sufficient and if you get downed, it’s your own fault. It’s up to you how you want to play and how effective you want the group to be. Just don’t expect other classes to carry you anymore than you carry them.
It was his pet. the pet can heal for a large amount so you can easily miss it. The reason Rangers can take a beating underwater is because everyone heals at a super fast rate on the surface, and when you factor in the pet healing at the same time it’s often too much for non-bursty classes to handle.
No bugs from what I can tell.
I use S/D almost exclusively, but I’m not very effective with it. I just don’t find openings to get my spells off alone and if I use my own knockdowns to try and set-up a combo, they get up and can evade very easily to avoid the tooth/phoenix/ring/grip combo. Only time I ever get this combo to work is if I’m with my ranger friend who dazes for me or uses his roots.
I also find 90% of the time when using scepter I’m at melee range anyway which makes me question why I’m not just using D/D as using daggers is infinitely easier than playing S/D.
Frost is also quite depressing as it has great healing, but the damage is just so bad compared to water options with other weapons.
And as said above, compared to the other options, its AE is much lower and MUCH more difficult to actually pull off and in exchange for this, the single target damage is pathetic and while the potential is there for insane burst damage, you’ll manage to pull it off once in a blue moon :/
Shame as the play style for scepter is the most fun for me.
Dragon’s Tooth just needs to drop from the sky immediately when cast. As you said, the AE is smaller and it isn’t ground targeted. I don’t feel it should have ground targeting though because we already have phoenix that is ground targeted. It would be painful using both skills back to back if they were ground targeted.
Phoenix is another thing that needs to be adjusted though. It should either explode where you target and fly back to you from there hitting everyone on the way, or simply fly like a bolt out of hell toward the target as trying to use it on moving targets isn’t possible.
Scepter has always annoyed me. Even though it’s supposed to be a weapon with a mid-range between dagger and staff, it’s more of a melee weapon than dagger is because you can’t land half the skills without being in on top of the target.
Can you still make a new character on another server?
Why don't transmute stones allow us to look the way we want?
in Suggestions
Posted by: Atherakhia.4086
While I absolutely love the look of some of the heavy armor and I would absolutely love to give my elementalist draconic armor, or a robe to my warrior, I don’t think it would be a great idea. Instead, the art designers should just start giving us some real variety in the armor they make. Why does all light armor have to be robes? Why can’t something other than heavy look good on a char? Why can’t heavy armor have a more closed in skirt instead of open leg or a cape look?
Can’t you just make a new character on this other server? Or do all of your characters have to be on the same server? What if you delete all of your characters and remake?
all characters are on all servers just you can only go on one server
For WvW purposes, you need to be on that server. I was curious how the above worked. Even though Fergs are awful, I’m content with the server I’m on for the time being. Would be nice to know I could make a character from scratch on another server if I wanted to though. Like if I found some long-lost guild I haven’t seen since my UO days or somehting.
Can’t you just make a new character on this other server? Or do all of your characters have to be on the same server? What if you delete all of your characters and remake?
I would hope they won’t bother raising the skill ceiling while we still have 4 out of 5 skills and 3 out of 5 traits being useless and 3 of 8 classes being of questionable worth.
As much effort as has been spent to make sure this game avoids one the biggest traps seen in MMO’s (the holy trinity), I’m surprised at how little effort has been made to avoid the other massive failings in MMO’s—The need to Min/Max and class diversity.
Worthless skills and traits isn’t something unique to any class in this game. Some classes may have more than others (The Ranger having something like 75% of their skills and traits being usless with another 10-15% of them being niche based in my opinion only of course), but no class can claim they’re facing a tough choice in picking traits in all of their trees when laying out a character template.
With so many traits being so awful it makes other traits seem almost mandatory in their selection. This is a huge issue for Elementalists for example because most would consider 30 points in Water and 30 points in Arcane mandatory for any build regardless of weapon or skills chosen.
The same can be said with skill choices. Some classes are designed so poorly that their weapons and traits simply don’t provide the tools to allow them to function at even a basic level. The way these classes compensate for this is by choosing defensive skills. So while something like Water Spirit may not be 100% useless, the simple fact that the class can’t function without 3 other skills, and the Spirit itself is awful without 30 points in traits devoted to it, make it 99.9% useless where that 0.1% niche where it may actually shine simply isn’t worth discussing.
Now I may have overstated things a little to get the point across, but I’m sure even classes most here would consider to be beyond overpowered, or at the very least not in need of much attention (thieves, warriors, guardians, elementalists, mesmers), still fall into the categories above where they’re forced into one build (or at most 3 builds with a lot of overlap between builds) and each build uses the same 3 skills and elite skill.
In a typical MMO I wouldn’t be concerned because the threat of losing a subscription often forces developers to make continual effort to fix these kinds of things over the life of a game. But we’re sitting at 3 patches (3 months effectively) with no word or acknowledgement these issues exist, that the developers consider them as large an issue as the players, or any sign that things will change at any point in the near future.
I realize it’s too much to ask for every skill and every trait to be useful 100% of the time, and it’s this simple fact alone that encourages build diversity because some of the scenarios these skills and traits may or may not work in are areas some players will wish to avoid entirely. But that’s not the case in this game. Many traits and skills are just so mediocre that other traits and skills that aren’t even that great to begin with turn out to be mandatory because they’re just so much better than everything else available.
Will things ever change?
the only problem with fractals is you have to get to level 30 before you’ve ran out of reasons to run it. the gear should be scaled down further so you can get the amulets and weapons by 20 instead of 30 so it doesn’t feel like so much of a grind. Aside from unlocking the dailies, there’s no reason to go above 30 right now.
If the highest significant level for fractals was 20 more players could partake and fewer people would complain about how the gear is distributed if you ran with lower level players.
I mean if you introduce agony resist and the only reason to run higher level fractals is for the resist, why bother? Let players unlock the chance to get weapons sooner.
It’s not an issue of pugs doing it or not. It’s an issue of some classes not being taken because they’re awful. Others that are taken, but only if they respec for the instance. And others still that most feel are so mandatory they have to come in triplicate or the group isn’t going to happen.
thankfully my ranger is above the level 30 threshold and my warrior won’t have problems getting in unless today’s AE nerf include 100b and whirlwind.
I’m on the 1 month and counting time. I guess someone else slipped in and took the name then :/
Long ago when I had no interest in playing this game, my friend let me make an alt on his account which eventually led me to getting my own copy of the game. However, I deleted the char on his account when I got my own and it’s still locked to this day.
How long till I can reuse that name on my own account?
While nerfing in general is to be expected, the extreme lack of communication from the developers in combination with the miserable state this game is in has people on edge.
Some of these overpowered classes people complain about have only one build to their name and since every nerf we’ve seen this far in this game has been so heavy handed, players are legitimately concerned that their class will be useless when they log in Monday afternoon.
Then when you consider we have about half the classes in this game being awful to begin with, the classes with the largest complaints (guardians, warriors, thieves) go unscathed but their competition some how manages to be nerfed (30% nerf to engineers) you can’t help but wonder wtf is going on.
I’m very concerned… in part because my main is an elementalist, I don’t play dagger/dagger, and the way I want to play the class barely functions at all right now. Any type of nerf will have me rerolling again and the only place ANet seems to want us to reroll into is the 3 dedicated melee characters.
If something is so blatantly broken it needs to be fixed by nerfing it, go for it. But nerfs in general should be put on hold until this game honestly has 8 real classes with more than 1 spec to choose from.
(edited by Atherakhia.4086)
I fail to see how RTL is a problem when it has the same range as many other abilities on similar cooldowns. Charge is 5 seconds longer on a weapon set with another movement option. Swoop is on the same cooldown on a class with more snares than any other class in the game (still not enough mind you).
I agree with the above poster that the heals are problem and doing minor things like increasing RTL to 20 seconds and making icy breath require you to hit a target to heal would be more than enough to reign in the build. Bunker gear and that whole meta will require more work than just nerfing classes one by one.
Could also just move RTL to scepter 3 and move the blind to dagger 4 also. That would kill the whole build and shift people into a weapon that isn’t very bunker friendly.
I’d much rather see a cloth user that uses buffs and enchants to increase his armor and stats so we could see a cloth melee user. An armor wearing caster really isn’t going to do it for me, but these are the only 2 things this game seems to be missing.
Also as a side note, this is how crafting should have been done as weel. A guild would buy crafting merchants and would be allowed to queue up work for their NPCs to do. The NPC’s would have a % chance to make everything sub-legendary in quality and any items of value specified by their guild leader would be sent to the guild bank. The rest could be automatically put on the trading post.
This way you could have the above mentioned guild tokens be used to buy a Dwarf Craftsmen or something that has a higher % chance to create exotic heavy chests. Or a Asura craftsmen with a higher % chance to create an exotic gun etc etc.
This is how it worked in Shadowbane and I absolutely loved it. And since the economy in this game is already a waste of time, it could be implemented quite easily.
I can’t view the video at work, but I’ll still give my opinion on how housing should work (never played GW1 so don’t know if this is similar to what it did).
But housing should be limited to guild structure only. They should be instanced so you can’t actually see the real structure until you go into that instance. When outside the instance it will look like a generic guild structure in a blasted, war-torn wasteland. Guild members would go to this structure and enter the instance and based on their guild, they would enter a zone with their guild’s actual structure.
A guild could then have a small instanced complex where individual members could have housing if need be, but until you entered the instance, it would look like 5 generic houses in a square (this is relevant later).
As a guild gains influence, xp, members, etc their guild castle/structure will grow. Some quests could give guild rewards that allow you to add small towers or some such nonsense to your guild keep/castle. So the more successful your guild is, the larger their castle will look to its members.
The point to all of this is Guild vs. Guild combat. When 2 guilds decide to attack each other, their 2 castle instances would be loaded into a larger instance with 1 castle on each end and a generic, randomly generated landscape between them. The idea would be to siege the other guild’s castle and steal some artifact kinda like CTF and that’s it. If you win, you get to add your enemies banner to your banner hall so all your guild members can see how your guild did. You would also gain random guild tokens that could be cashed in etc for random things as time goes on.
the guild that lost doesn’t lost their castle or anything and they would still get XP, Infuence and such based off how well they did so guilds would still be encouraged to participate. Perhaps winners would get 5 tokens and losers would get 1.
After a few months have gone by and the guilds have ranked up on their server and such the above mentioned generic keep where people would go to zone into their guild hall instances would be replaced by an external view of the top 3 castles as a sort of ranking system showing off the best guilds. These castles would look just like their respective guild keeps and once a month these castles would be refreshed to show off the current top 3 and what their respective castles look like.
My problem with scepter in my limited real experience is the burst component from fire is simply too difficult to land due to the slow travel/activation time for dragons tooth and phoenix. this means you can only ever use these spells in melee combat and even if you set up the attack with a knockdown, the activation time for these spells is so slow, that they’ll get up from the knockdown with just enough time to evade out of the attacks and take 0 damage.
The build also lacks a real snaring option. What I would give if frost aura and frozen burst switched position! Without a snare, it makes the burst damage that much more impossible to land on an active opponent.
Then worst of all is how dependent the build is on attunement swapping with so many poor auto-attack options.
I really do love the playstyle of scepter the most, but my only hope at pulling it off is with support in small groups. 1v1 I find it severely lacking because I can’t get the damage to actually hit.
another one who didnt realize yet that WD reflects projectiles …
seriously just reflect ONE unload from a thief to turn the fight instantly into a win, and unlike thieves daggerstorm our reflect skill doesnt have 90 sec cd.
So you switch weapons to offhandax and doing what after wd? maybe dancing till the cd for the next weaponswitch is over?
Not to mention most don’t use axe off hand in favor of dagger or horn…
Pretty sure any class going up against a ranger with axe axe is sitting there grinning waiting for their free badges after they stop spinning.
Overall I think the staff is a fairly strong weapon, it’s just not well suited for strategic play like in sPvP or smaller scale fights because of the extreme lack of direct damage and all the ground targeted AE’s with long trigger times.
The first thing to do would be to increase the trigger times on things like Earth2 and Water2. There’s no reason for a 2 second delay in damage when these spells cast. 1 second seems like plenty if not too long.
The next problem I have with staff is how it has no real direct damage options other than auto attack. Air2 has such a long cast time it’s not really the kind of burst I’m looking for. And I think that’s the only thing that isn’t ground based or an auto attack that does upfront damage, right? That’s a huge issue for smaller scale battles. I would make Fire2 do instant damage and if it crits, it leaves behind the lava font. I’d like to see Fire3 do up front damage to the target and the AE DOT to people around them.
Now as for defense and such, I agree it’s also very lacking for staff and relies too heavily on cantrips (which are quite powerful, don’t get me wrong). I’d like to see Magnetic Aura have a second use where it knocks everyone around you away and knocked down. I’d like to see earth5 to have a faster travel time so it can actually hit something. Would also be nice if the air5 ability could be collapsed pulling people toward the middle of it kind of like how the mesmer ability works.
Aside from that, I think just increasing the staff projectile speed to match that of bows and rifles will help bring out the damage we’re expecting from staff as right now I’d say 1 in 3 shots probably miss (unless it’s earth where about 4 out of 5 shots miss).
Critickitten, I’ve been playing the ranger archetype in every MMO that has offered it from UO, Shadowbane, EQ, AC, WoW, etc. I understand it perfectly fine and can play the class perfectly fine. It doesn’t make a difference. Fact of the matter is the melee classes have more tools than the ranger has to keep targets where they want and get targets where they want. Skill simply doesn’t factor into it when a warrior has 5 ways to get in melee range and stay there while the Ranger has 3.
Trust me, and I don’t mean to be mean, but neither you nor me are the greatest rangers this game has ever seen or better than those that have come before it. If you want to waste our time online in a match by all means look me up. I’m Zanzer on my Ranger (yes, the zHunter mod and the i.w.i.n. button Zanzer if those mean anything to you).
But the Ranger in this game is broken. I’m sorry you don’t agree and you feel it’s the greatest bow using archetype you’ve ever played and it has met your every expectation. 99% of the playerbase doesn’t agree with you.
Go ask people the list the 3 weakest classes and the 3 strongest classes in this game. I’m willing to bet it goes Guardian, Thief, Warrior … Engineer, Necromancer, Ranger. If you feel the last three I mentioned belong on the top of the list, so be it. No one agrees with you.
And this is all beside the point because if the Ranger’s AE is nerfed, it’s a blanket nerf they did to all AEs and not to single out the Ranger class.
Yea, the game could use some character wipes and migrations before the paid server transfers start happening. Being forced to pay a fee just so you can play a supposed mmo with other players isn’t exactly fair.
And that’s why guesting is coming along with it…
Guesting is deceptive. We currently have this functionality with dungeons as you can group with other people. But won’t we still need to know people ahead of time to ‘guest’ with them in the open world? Nothing beats a PUG when doing random world events. And I also wonder if guesting will become an issue with dragon spawns and the like where people will go from server to server for these world events.
Need more details on how guesting will work but I see it not helping with low player zones and instead just opening up the door for more griefing.
Compared to the other classes, I’d agree that the elite skills suck. As a sylvari, I’d rather my entalging root ability than any of the current options.
I say make the elite skill an offensive stance where you reduce your movement speed by 30% and increase damage by 30% for 15 seconds on a 1min cooldown.
What are you going to nerf though?
RTL has the same cooldown as other abilities. Same as swoop, shorter than Charge.
Can’t pretend the class has too many escapes as the Warrior of all classes has about the same number of skills to escape/engage.
Can’t be the damage because the bunker builds in question don’t do any damage and when not in PVT gear you tend to be killed in the duration of a knockdown from Warriors, Thieves, and Guardians (classes that have some of the strongest AE in the game and are probably more likely to be nerfed than Elementalists btw).
There’s really not much you can change.
Perhaps changing icy breath to only heal if it does damage and increasing RTL to a 20 second cooldown, but that’s not going to change much. If D/D is even an issue to begin with.
The real issue is how Scepter and Staff are an afterthought to D/D. Perhaps if they were more viable weapons fewer people would be D/D and the problem would fix itself.
Yea, the game could use some character wipes and migrations before the paid server transfers start happening. Being forced to pay a fee just so you can play a supposed mmo with other players isn’t exactly fair.
equip 5 sigs and a greatsword and hit 2. that’s what it takes to win at warrior and that’s what people are complaining about in this thread. It’s a gross exageration, but it does have some basis in fact. You can tell the difference between a warrior who plays like the above and one that has truly mastered their class, but the output in damage is about the same. The only difference is what they do while GS is on cooldown.
Currently we have absolutely horrible classes like Necromancers and Rangers who are only barely staying relevant in PvP due to their bunker builds. If they didn’t have these, they’d be second class citizens.
….
But be warned, once bunker is gone, Rangers and Necromancers will likely be pushed back down to useless status.
How is it that my longbow ranger who is almost entirely dedicated to burst damage is able to stay relevant in WvW against virtually everything it fights, save for culling-abusing thieves and defense-focused guardians?
inb4 “WvW isn’t PvP”, even though it clearly is. It’s not as fancy as sPvP perhaps but it’s clearly a form of PvP.
To be blunt, you’re grossly oversimplifying a complex issue with broad generalizations that are misleading at best. I don’t want them nerfing AoE either, but let’s not pretend that “bunker builds” are the only viable course in PvP for a ranger, because seriously, they’re not. Maybe the problem lies with you, here, not the class.
There’s a difference between you having fun and you being relevant.
And yes, there’s about 1 whole spec for Rangers and Necromancers in sPvP. In WvW you could go with a 0/0/0/0/0 build and still think you’re making a difference. And burst on a ranger is laughable. You mean with zephyr, fury, rapid shot, and vuln right after your bird crits? Ever seen what a warrior can do with the press of a single button? Or a thief can do from stealth? Because if you have, you’d know that what you consider burst and what most people consider burst are wildly different.
And don’t think I’m trying to weasel out of a nerf here. I have a Ranger and an elementalist and I’m on board with an AE nerf if it meant more direct damage options for the elementalist. But I don’t use D/D which is the major complaint and I don’t buy into the mobility being the cause of the issue. Instead it’s the healing available to the class.
(edited by Atherakhia.4086)
Currently we have absolutely horrible classes like Necromancers and Rangers who are only barely staying relevant in PvP due to their bunker builds.
I’m also not convinced AE is the problem here. I think it’s the way healing works with all the bunker builds going around right now. Why not scale back some of the healing options, change water fields to provide aegis and regen instead of large direct heals and regen.
Necro’s are awesome played and specced right. Also, you forgot to add in the fact the the reason there ARE bunker eles is because they pretty much are forced to go bunker to survive being killed by anyone that sneezes at them.
Also, there isn’t ENOUGH healing in this game. You really cant complain about regen because it is a trickle of health compared to the massive damage people take. Whoopty do, you are regenning for 200 a second out of a health pool of 20k, but are taking hits for 4-6k a second. Oh and those other heals on long cool downs some classes get, is even a 2k self heal that doesnt even negate a single attack worth complaining about?
I specifically said Necros are being held up by a single spec…
And perhaps if the bunker/healing issue was resolved the true problem like melee burst on warriors and thieves will once again begin getting discussed? That is where the main problem is that made the need for bunker builds in the first place.
And by healing issues, I meant healing for the elementalist. D/D wouldn’t be nearly as competetive if you actually had to land icy breath to heal yourself or if the water fields didn’t actually heal you for 2k-4k.
I really do think the issues we see right now are related to
1.) The healing options for d/d being too powerful (note that once D/D is scaled back some, the whole class will be as useless as engineers and rangers).
2.) Healing options in general being too powerful (this will scale back bunker builds thus making Eles, Necros, Rangers all useless).
3.) Melee burst is simply nuts.
I say fix those 3 things and lets see where the classes fall because those 3 things will destroy the current meta and resolve the issues that made the bunker builds show up in the first place. Then we can worry about fixing the classes on a class by class basis starting with the engineer, necromancer, and ranger which are just god awful classes right now.
Classes as a whole that need to be completely rebuilt from the ground up? I’d say the Ranger and Engineer are the only two so broken right now that they simply make no sense in this game.
Classes that have so many bugs holding them back that the class feels worthless? On top of the two listed above, I’d add Necromancers here because the class is built somewhat well, it’s the bugs that have been reported and ignored for months that are getting in the way.
Now that said, a lot of classes in this game have absolutely terrible trait trees and skills that limit the class’ options. This would bring Elementalists into the list with the above classes.
When all is said and done, the only classes that seem to be functioning at all in this game with actual build diversity and weapon options are the Thief, Guardian, and Warrior. And while these classes aren’t without their issues, they certainly aren’t teetering on the line between being useful and useless like the above.
Warriors only have it bad due to the current meta the game is using and their lack of condition removal options. If they had 1 more real condition removal they’d be fine so long as the meta moved away from the passive healing type specs everyone is using.
As for AE, I’m really scared what they’re going to do. Currently we have absolutely horrible classes like Necromancers and Rangers who are only barely staying relevant in PvP due to their bunker builds. If they didn’t have these, they’d be second class citizens. But then to threaten an AE nerf that will hit Elementalists (a class with maybe 95% of their skills being AE by design with next to no DD options) and Necromancers the hardest unless we see something like melee AE being reduced to 3 targets.
How did past MMO’s handle massive AE problems? Shadowbane probably handled it the best with their spell resist system and armor types. But can this game be moved over to a spell resist system when no gear has been itemized with this in mind?
In WoW there simply wasn’t a lot of it. The AE That we did have also wasn’t nearly as powerful as the DD alternatives. But then again they didn’t have entire skill sets that revolved around it. Let alone an entire class with nothing but AE options.
I’m also not convinced AE is the problem here. I think it’s the way healing works with all the bunker builds going around right now. Why not scale back some of the healing options, change water fields to provide aegis and regen instead of large direct heals and regen. Why not encourage actual thought behind gear selection instead of everyone going for PVT.
The classes that aren’t doing well right now are those that don’t have the tools to make bunker builds. Find a way to nerf those and the problem with AE should be resolved as those that are doing it will get hit harder and those classes that currently rely heavily on burst like Warriors will start to show back up.
But be warned, once bunker is gone, Rangers and Necromancers will likely be pushed back down to useless status.
Never had a problem on my now 28 ranger getting a group and the pet is useless for the most part at that level. I can’t imagine Ele’s having any problems.
As was said above, I’d say as long as they have a skill or 2 I’d have no problem bringing them along until agony really becomes an issue. Fractals are not complicated at all and most have some stupid gimmick to them. If they can understand the fight I’d bring them along. There’s no DPS timer or anything to worry about.
RTL isn’t the problem. And Warriors don’t need strong escapes because they have heavy armor, 25k hp, strong snares and incapacitates. And even with all of this, you can’t honestly pretend that the escape options for warrior are exactly week with 2 greatsword and 2 1h sword options on short cooldowns with fairly long range (not 1200 I realize, but you’re also not a ranged class in light armor with 15k hp).
And look at other abilities with similar affect to RTL. Rangers have swoop with the same range and cooldown. Warriors have rush which is on only a slightly higher cooldown and can still use whirlwind to get an opener or savage leap. Without RTL or a snare on the warrior, they can out run anyone. And they have insanely high burst (which is probably the AE damage they’re talking about toning down).
Even with high armor, high HP and high damage the warrior class is still fodder for most decent players, unless you meet a warrior with exceptional skill or get caught by HB in a mob. There’s little utility to speak of and whatever little utility they may have, there’s counters for them. But it is impossible to have a counter for each of the 20+ skills that any elementalist can utilize. You can say that you can counter this and that but other classes simply do not have as much to offer.
A bunker ele is far more survivable than the average warrior, while a bunker warrior is completely missing the point and is basically a static object to beat up on. Warriors are just not a problem, let’s put it that way.
They’re far more survivable because of heals moreso than the escapes. RTL is the only real one on a short cooldown. The others your snares/roots are on shorter cooldowns by half or better. But yes, Warriors are fodder in PvP and that revolves around the sheer amount of things flying around and your class’ poor healing options. With only 1 hard counter to conditions and half the classes out there wanting to get away from you, Warriors have it rough.
With that mentality, you would also avoid thieves, warriors, or any class that can get out of combat and remove their escape mechanisms? Any class that uses a skill to escape combat does not get the benefit of the skill – the tradeoff of using it to either enter or leave combat. Of all aspects of d/d eles, mobility is the least of concern compared to its bunkering capabilities or aoe damage.
Sorry to sound harsh, but button mashing on any profession will beat unaware players – if you are being beaten by a button mashing ele, you need to work on improving your gameplay. Also, the major skills are on a 40-45 second cooldown – RTL is a movement /gap closer like any other similar skills on other professions (and not to mention stealth which is the easiest way to escape combat safely. Edit: Marzattackz summarizes this nicely in his post above).
Warrior escape is a joke. It is definitely not on par with Ride the Lightning, which is usually followed up by several other skills which can create a gap large enough between yourself and your enemies to break combat. Warrior defense largely consists of facetanking every bit of damage the enemy can deal them. Let’s not even bring them up.
Thieves are another class that are complained about for obvious reasons. Thankfully most thieves are too stubborn to actually escape combat and are terribly glassy in the end.
Button mashers are not a problem for skilled players, but with the endless amount of skills that elementalists can access, a button masher can go a long way. On most videos of elementalists playing, the lack of thought put into their use of skills is laughable. Despite this they can get away with it because of the ultimate bail-out button on a 15 second cooldown.
Let’s compare a necromancer who has to pay close attention to the amount of boons and conditions on the enemy and cannot afford to waste a single skill which are usually on cooldowns of 60 seconds or more. There’s just much more skill required to achieve a similar result. I’m not saying they should take everything from elementalists, but there’s definitely a problem even within the elementalist class itself of one particular build achieveing a lot more with the same amount of effort put in (or less).
RTL isn’t the problem. And Warriors don’t need strong escapes because they have heavy armor, 25k hp, strong snares and incapacitates. And even with all of this, you can’t honestly pretend that the escape options for warrior are exactly week with 2 greatsword and 2 1h sword options on short cooldowns with fairly long range (not 1200 I realize, but you’re also not a ranged class in light armor with 15k hp).
And look at other abilities with similar affect to RTL. Rangers have swoop with the same range and cooldown. Warriors have rush which is on only a slightly higher cooldown and can still use whirlwind to get an opener or savage leap. Without RTL or a snare on the warrior, they can out run anyone. And they have insanely high burst (which is probably the AE damage they’re talking about toning down).
I think you guys a greatly overstating the skill requirement for D/D. It literally is all about spamming AE’s and trying to stay close to the target. But even with that said, the AE’s dagger has really isn’t doing the kind of damage that I would consider excessive. I think D/D’s problems relate more to its longevity and we’d sooner see dagger 2 and 5 adjusted some.
I also think you guys are jumping the gun with just what they mean about too much AE. Personally, I think we’re more likely to see them tone down melee attacks so there’s a cap of 3 targets with their melee swings or something like that. I don’t think we’ll see staff’s AE’s targeted as the cooldown on fire abilities and the way they’re used is quite limited. They also have to acknowledge that there are so few players actually using staff so why push the few die hards left away?
When all is said and done, what are people really complaining about with D/D these days? It’s all the escapes and all the heals. It’s not the damage because people who use D/D are in tanking gear….
I fail to see how d/d is more powerful than thieves and I stand by my earlier comment that if you asked every player to name the 3 strongest and 3 weakest classes in this game 90% of them wouldn’t list the elementalist in either category.
If they nerf D/D, it had better be accompanied by some enormous improvements to staff and scepter because short of that we should probably get weapon swapping to become enabled.
I highly doubt RTL is going to be nerfed. It’s on par with other similar skills with the same range and cooldown. If they were going to nerf something to try and make d/d less viable, it would probably be icy breath so it only healed if you actually did damage.
I’m also of the opinion d/d isn’t really that over the top. It just seems like it because all other options for this class are just so terrible and most of the other classes in this game are just god awful. If someone asked anyone who played this game to list the top 3 strongest classes and bottom 3 weakest classes I’d bet 90% of the players wouldn’t list Elementalists in either category.
I would hope if they were going to change this class at all it would be to make something along the lines of a massive overhaul to the fire tree, a rethinking of how the scepter does damage, and rethinking how staff just doesn’t have enough burst output.
Like any reasonable ranger who wants to play a ranged class, I use greatsword. Why you ask? Because it’s the only way this class can properly disengage from a fight.
Is this a legitimate thread or a desire to push more into a tree many would consider mandatory due to empathic bond? I mean I completely agree that this tree, like every single other tree for this class, is just a total train wreck. But that said, you completely gutted the things that made skirmishing even remotely useful and gave it absolute crap traits in exchange. I mean hide in plain sight should be a freaking signet as it is. Passive do everything the trait does, on use, hide.
Just so much wrong with this class simply reorganizing traits isn’t going to work. Not sure there are enough good ones available to this class to fill 2 trees.
It’s the same in PvE and PvP. You run around in circles spamming auto attacks until you’re in melee range and go squish.
I mean the class is broken from the ground up with almost nothing rewarding to offer this game or the player. Everything from skills, traits, pets, utility, to PvP design just doesn’t work. If you aspire to do more than sit on a wall all day (which even that is working against a handicap because no pet!) you may as well choose another class.
Ranger is level 26 fractals.
Pet dies every agony.
Can often switch before its death so the new pet doesn’t have agony and new pet when swapped back will be full health again without it.
This is assuming you didn’t swap for quickness.
Until the pet’s damage accounts for about 10% of this class’ damage AND can’t be targeted by random AE affects, it will continue to be a drain on a group. And so long as it adds no value to the group other than healing spring to offset the enormous drain on damage output the ranger brings to the group, it will continue to be a garbage class… as has been discussed on this board countless times.
Ranger is the easiest class to begin with but also the hardest class to master. It may require more skills to reach the same level which other classes can gain much easier especially in pvp. So the population of rangers are very polarized unlike other classes’ Gaussian distribution(that’s my feeling in pvp/wvw, rangers I met was either super good or bad but I can hardly find someone fairly good or bad, but for other classes there are all kinds of levels). Same phenomenon happened to Ele before more and more ppl get use to D/D bunker build.
That analogy only works if the class is legitimately given the tools to suceed. The ranger hasn’t and the game itself is working against it.
The ranger class right now does nothing but run in circles auto attacking things at half range. The knockbacks are ineffective. The snares aren’t enough. The roots don’t work. There are no reliable knockbacks. Pet skills miss 90% of the time due to delayed release and rooting.
When you play a kiting class but the tools you have to kite are half as effective as the tools other classes have to overcome being kited it, you’re left with a failure of a class. This is why most people consider the ranger walking badges.
My issues with alts in this game is a lot of the things that make this game fun are a p.i.t.a. to do. When all is said and done, this game is like Serial Killer Barbie where between acts of murder and mayhem we’re playing dress-up. Why then aren’t dyes account wide? Why is my bank filled with tokens when they’re just another form of currency that could be held in a status bar like gold? Why isn’t karma automatically shared in a single pool between all alts? These are little things that allow players to enjoy their alts that are simply missing in this game.
What they should consider doing, as opposed to forcing us to keep 20 pages of mail, several mules, and god knows what else worth of low level gear is introduce some actual scaling gear in this game that could be shared between characters or could be used as viable level 80 introductory gear.
Introduce ‘robes’ where you could socket in X stones and each stone gives you your level * 1.5 of a stat rounding down. This way you don’t need to transfer a dozen pieces of gear, your gear is comparable to some of the better greens at 80, and you can enjoy the leveling process.
I think WoW introduced something similar to this in the last expansion they had as well.
Pass.
The only reason to increase the trait limit is to 1.) cover up failed class design because they need 20 more traits to become functional or 2.) because the class has too many traits that are deemed mandatory. Neither situation is acceptable.
There are simply too many worthless traits or poorly designed class mechanics to ignore by increasing trait limits because what of the classes that actually have good trait systems? Guardians, Warriors, and Thieves are probably the only classes in this game with actual build diversity. Lets work on the other classes first so everyone isn’t running the same exact spec.
As long as you aren’t running a 3rd party program/script to keep one character following you around and controlling both characters from a single keyboard simultaneously you shouldn’t have a problem.
Personally I don’t see the problem. Some of my greatest moments in past MMO’s wkittentering training PvPers. Granted my other greatest moments was also being a train and controlling multiple chars (Holy casters in Shadowbane for example).
Haven’t played Necro, but I’m not that impressed with Ele. The D/D build which everyone says is dynamic and fun turned out to be pretty one-note. You kind of just spam keys and try to keep your character near the target as best you can. You could probably make a macro to play it for you. Scepter is far more engaging, but far more useless because the skills are just so awful. Staff is very straightforward and awful because the skills just don’t have any synergy. You’re auto-attacking all day and occasionally dropping an AE on the ground that no one is dumb enough to sit in.
Dagger Water #2: Remove the heal. Make it heal for a % of the damage done. This will resolve a great deal of the D/D complaints people have if we actually had to hit with it to heal.
Scepter Fire #1: More upfront damage. Lower condition damage if need be.
Scepter Fire #2: Shorten the arming time so it fires off quicker
Scepter Fire #3: Make it explode and spawn where target is and steal a boon. Fly back and give us the boon(s) and vigor regen hitting all targets on the return path.
Scepter Water #1: I saw it suggested elsewhere, but have each hit provide 1 stack of vuln.
Scepter Water #2: Drastically increase damage and reduce arming time.
Scepter Lightning #1: Add a chance on crit to stun for 1 second.
Scepter Lightning #3: Merge #2 with #3 by increasing damage.
Scepter Lightning #2: PBAoE. For every target hit gain 2 seconds of quickness for a max of 10 seconds.
Scepter Earth #3: Blind and knock back.
Staff projectile speed increased to match bows. All auto attacks could use a slight damage increase too since a lot of the activated abilities are strickly utility oriented. Staff really is quite boring to play.
Staff Fire #2: Initial damage when cast and not have to wait a second.
Staff Fire #3: Lower condition damage, increase condition duration, increase direct damage.
Staff Water #2: Faster activation time.
Staff Earth #2: Snare targets in AE and erupt after 2seconds.
Staff Earth #4: No longer need a snare due to #2 so introduce a sink hole ability that creates muddy ground for us to jump in or a sink hole to immobalize a group.
That’s just weapon skills. Traits are a mess. Skills are a mess. Etc.