Guild Wars 2

Back on topic: yes, there’s no reason at all why RTL has such a big cooldown in PVE. Even in PVP the skill was overnerfed imo (compare it to another snare-ignoring gap closer: Savage Leap).
For PVE, the issue is much more simplistic: moving quickly reduces time spent on running, reduces amount of time being bored, increases the fun. Arenanet sometimes seems to forget that a game has to be fun, and certain details, like moving too slow, ruin that fun. Of course, in PVP mobility has to be toned down a bit, so that every class has a chance of catching another class.
TL;DR version: split your skills for pve and pvp, arenanet. It’s becoming painfully obvious that it’s necessary.

Thanks a lot fot the advice! I’ll see what I can find.

Thanks, just checked it. This PC is indeed 64 bits.
Anything else I should pay attention to? Will the processor, graphic card and RAM suffice ?

Since the launch of GW2, I have used an old PC, running minimum graphics with around 30 fps. I’m getting really tired of that now, so I started to look for a cheap replacement. I found a PC costing $550 on Amazon, but since I don’t know too much about the technical stuff, I don’t know how well gw2 will run on it. I want to be able to run medium graphics at around 60 fps.

These are the specs of what I have in mind: the AAC-X4 Desktop Computer made by AA computers.

Summary
Processor: FX-Series Quad-Core FX-4100
RAM: 8 GB SDRAM DDR3
Hard Drive: 1000 GB
Graphics Coprocessor: ATI RadeonTM HD 3000
Wireless Type: 802.11bgn

Other Technical Details
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium
Processor Brand: AMD
Processor Count: 4
Computer Memory Type: DDR3 SDRAM
Hard Drive Interface: Serial ATA

Could anybody tell me if there will be aspects holding back the performance if I use this PC? Thanks in advance!

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The thing I’m wondering about is why it is everyone is focused on the axes auto-attack when that is the least used weapon skill whenever I run a power necro.

Using Axe/Focus and Dagger/Warhorn, whenever I’m at range the only time I ever use Axe #1 is when everything else is on cooldown. That isn’t very often, since Ghastly Claws is on a 6.4 second cooldown with Axe Mastery. What I’ll do is use Focus #4, then focus #5, then ghastly claws, then I pop over to Dagger/Warhorn and use Dagger #3 then Dagger #2, then I’ll pop into vr for awhile, then swap back to use Ghastly Claws and focus skills again.

Only when I have to keep at range does the axe ever have to use the auto attack, and that is mostly in PVE. The vulnerability stacking and damage are alright, but in the end my main source of damage comes from DS and firing off Ghastly Claws every 6 seconds. My rotation commonly involves Ghastly Claws – DS – Ghastly Claws – Other things – repeat.

That’s the spirit! If your whole weapon’s great except for the autoattack, don’t autoattack. The necro has very good options for the downtime on the axe (swap to dagger or death shroud). Or, from a pve perspective, just take well of suffering and /laugh while everything melts before your eyes.
Power necros are great now. Don’t overbuff things that are in a good spot.

I’ve done some calculations, and this is what I found to be the stats of a full berserker set compared to a full celestial set (both have exotic weapons and armor, and ascended trinkets):

Berserker:
Power: 1008
Precision: 693
Crit dmg: 64

Celestial:
All stats: 453
Crit dmg: 58
Magic find: 44

As you can see, the berserker set still has more crit dmg, because zerker trinkets scale insanely good. This means celestial has:
-555 less power
-240 less precision (or 11-12% less crit chance)
-6% less crit dmg

-453 more toughness, vitality, condition damage and healing power
-44% more magic find

I don’t know what this means for hybrid builds yet, but it might be interesting to mix celestial armor/weapons with berserker trinkets to gain most from both sets.

I’m still a big fan of a conjure just replacing its respective element, allowing you to still use 3 attunements at will. The OP’s post seems good as well though. Heck, I don’t really care how they do it, but the devs really need to make conjures more smooth.

That means less clunky to use, not just adding moar stats.

I agree that air needs to be made a bit more interesting somehow. The auto-attack is not a huge problem to me, because every weapon of the ele seems to have a certain attunement with an okay auto-attack (for the staff: fireball).

Lightning surge needs to be made less clunky. I think the best way to do this is reducing its cast time to 1/4 second, and either:
1) making it a ground-targeted AoE (think of something like Spirit Rift from GW1);
2) making it stick to the foe for 1 second and then exploding for an AoE effect (think of something like Lightning Surge from GW1.)

Either way, the enormously long casting time needs to go. I don’t mind the delay of the blind (instant aoe blind + damage would be OP), but I want it to be a skill that increases DPS instead of decreasing it!

D/any deals more single-target damage than S/P, but S/P deals more AoE damage and is more durable due to the evasion on named Pistol Whip. Remember, the stealthy type of defense thieves rely on in PvP works less well in PvE, so I find S/P more effective than D/any in PvE.

Back on topic: I think it’d be great to make Sunspot create a Lava Font (maybe a toned down one). It would create more DPS without allowing ridiculous bursting.

A blast finisher on earth would be too much though, we already have so many blasts finishers. If Earthen Blast would simply do twice as much damage, I’d be happy about it (and then I could move on to the other useless traits).

In another thread, Daecollo asked for 15.000 HP heals on warrior. And he just keeps going on and on… Please think before you post, Daecollo. Ridiculous suggestions won’t change a thing.

Unfortunatly, DPS from auto-attacks can’t be calculated like this. The activation time on the tooltip is often wrong. For example, Spatial Surge (mesmer) fires about as often as Long Range Shot (ranger), while their tooltips say differently.
Nice effort, but unfortunatly this data is very inaccurate.

@ OP:
Those changes all look very well thought out. I feel Flurry needs some special attention though. Its damage is too low for a burst skill.
Right now, it deals about twice the damage of a Sever Artery (not calculating condition removal). Imo, that could be doubled to 4x a Sever Artery (or maybe even tripled, but I’m not sure about that). It IS a burst skill, after all. It needs to do more DPS than auto-attacking.

The GS really needs to be less clunky. Its auto-attack and HB are fine; they work the way they should imo. I agree that GS3 needs to ignore snares (except immobilize of course). GS4 needs a faster animation, making it less obvious and easier to land in close quarters (not weaved as easily). Rush needs an animation similar to Swoop, allowing you to immeadiatly continue attacking after you reach the foe.

All in all, I would be very happy to see those weapon skill changes! Give us a little more defensive capabilities, and I’m happy!

Let’s see… what would balance the necro… cracks fingers
-Increased CDs on staff skills by 50%. They were too low
-Burning
-Reduced axe and dagger AoE capabilities because they were too strong
-Burning
-Removed all stun breakers and replaced them with minion skills (to revive the old minion master builds)
-Wells no longer deal damage, but apply the ‘Wet’ condition, which increases the amount of lightning damage the enemy takes. Warning: this removes burning.

I would love to see spells like ineptitude come back to GW2. Heck, just remove all mantras and give us a ‘hex’ utility type! With some tweaking, they could feel like the old mesmer again, while still adapting to the faster pace of GW2.
Think of things like:

Clumsiness: Target is hexed with Clumsiness. If it attacks three times, it is stunned and takes big damage.
Frustration: Target is hexed with Frustration. Its executes skills slower and takes damage whenever interrupted.
Fragility: Target foe is hexed wih Fragility. Whenever it gains or loses an unique condition, it takes damage.
Phantom Pain: Target foe is hexed with Phantom Pain. When Phantom Pain ends, this foe takes part of the damage it took while hexed as an additional damage package.

Numbers would have to be balanced. They might even be able to get a small AoE through traits!

I agree completely. If the devs want to get coser to balancing the professions, some skills will need to be split, and RTL is a good example. Right now PvE elementalists are unnecessarily slow.
Remember, being too slow achieves nothing in PvE. It only spoils part of the fun, and game patches should NEVER do that. This is a game after all. It’s supposed to be fun.

kostbabis.8791:

I love how everybody is in terror for upcoming changes after the last balancing patch !!
I get its very hard to imagine that patches will bring anything other than game changing nerfs but..
Zephyrs boon is not even used in tpvp anymore cause d/d is overshadowd by s/d.Also it affcects 2 skills max on d/d besides combos and is definately not over the top.A good fury and swiftness uptime didnt hurt anybody and isnt that hard to achieve on a lot of classes.
Not to mention that moving this trait up and you destroy all aura share builds including those with the fire trait.
Dont think ele has to fear the nerf hammer for now..
They already gave like the worst possible nerf to rtl,nerfed auras,healing etc..It comes to a point where you cant nerf anymore.It makes you look stupid afterall

What you say is true: it wouldn’t be reasonable to nerf zephyrs boon right now. That’s why I’m afraid that it WILL be nerfed. The devs have shown complete incompetence with elementalist balancing, so don’t hope for even the slightest buff. Or even staying the same.
You know Arenanet screwed up when a warrior has far more mobility than an ele…

Gorillas. Baboons. Chimps.
I wanna see more monkeys.

I agree with solrik that Concussion Shot’s cooldown has to be lowered a bit (just like Hilt Bash’s, but that’s kinda off-topic), apart from that the weapon feels great to me.

The longbow has a bit more problems. Its auto-attack is slow and underwhelming, and Rapid Fire is a copy of Crossfire (shortbow auto-attack), without the potential bleeding.

Especially Rapid Fire could use a buff, because it makes no sense the auto-attack of the shortbow outshines a cooldown skill of the longbow. Maybe it could be reworked into a faster channel with less arrows, making it more bursty and less time-consuming. Something like 6 arrows in 2 seconds would be great (keeping the damage per arrow the same).

I just played around a bit with a build calculator, and I though to myself: Gosh, I want Knight’s gear with more focus on Power instead of Toughness!
All I can do now is bump this thread and hope a dev sees it

As earlier said, I think there should be a trait that makes symbols snare. A trait that would add an immobilize would be too strong, so I think it would be best to make all symbols cripple for 1-2s per pulse. We could use a bit more soft CC, and Zeal has plenty of room for good traits.

P.S.: to the people that say Cripple doesn’t fit the style of the Guardian: don’t forget what those symbols actually are. They are spells that make the ground hurt. I could imagine people getting crippled after stepping on a circle of destructive light magic on the ground.

tigirius.9014:

I’d love this actually because of the way they mishandled healing on some classes the bonuses from full sets come nowhere near close enough to handle the boss fights so this would help out alot if healing could be stacked.

This might make healing easier, but don’t forget that without stats like Toughness and Vitality, you will still die in one hit. And without enough Power, you will only be healing and dealing no damage. This would mean you’d be a dedicated healer, and that’s against the philosophy of the game.

The stat spread system is a way to maintain balance between stats. For the sake of game balance, it has to stay.

This. I agree so much with this. IMO, It’s silly I can’t completely customize my own armor. It shouldn’t be possible to stack 3 inscriptions of the same stat, though. That would make certain build too imbalanced (bunkers with 10000 armor… eep!)

Not gonna ask for a sketch, since you’re a bit busy, but I wanted to bump this thread and tell you YOU’RE AWESOME, SNOWZOMBIE!!!

How about we make it a passive effect that gives a 75% chance to block all attacks, damaging nearby foes whenever it blocks a projectile? I would like that. A lot.

I wouldn’t advice getting bears, because they’re about as exciting as watching paint dry
Drakes are actually very durable and still give good AoE DPS. Bring two of them, and low-level PVE will be a breeze!

Sounds nice, but don’t get your hopes up

Until now, Arenanet has used the flattest form of flat villains: dragons that just destroy everything without a reason. Heck, you don’t even deal with minions that turn against Zhaitan, because all Risen are just as mindless as the big bad.

Deep storylines are one of the points in which GW1 outclasses GW2 by far. I never really cared about anything, not even when my beloved companion (sarcasm) Apatia died.

I think Kick shouldn’t lunge towards your foe. I mean, c’mon, 2 out of 3 parts of the auto-attack chain disable dodging? I would be perfectly fine with the chain if only the leap disabled dodging, but right now the sword feels too clunky to me.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

I think they’re concerned about pet evasions making the skill level of pet management too low. As ranger we’re supposed to have to learn how to manage the pet and know when to recall it or send it in, but don’t get me wrong, your example of the spider boss is exactly why the current system falls short. Even if you have them heeled, when you dodge they might stand in the aoe long enough to get 1 shot before they even decided to move. I do think a middle ground can be found though, one where heeling your pet is still essential so relying on evasions won’t make it “easy mode pet management” but making them more responsive in the “heeled” state so that when you dodge, they stick to you like glue. It still leaves enough room for error, still allows them to die if you dodge poorly or fail to micro the pet well enough, but would increase their survivability significantly.

Seems like a great idea to me. This way, you could still determine if your pet has to keep attacking (keep it on guard), or has to dodge out of harm’s way (set it on heel), solving the potential problem of pets evading unnecessarily.

Let’s just hope any of the devs look at this…

Agreed! IMO, they should give us more flexible ways to mitigate damage done to our pets instead of just boosting their toughness and vitality. I’d totally trade in some HP for a dodge mechanic on pets, so that I don’t have to push ‘return to me’ and wait 10 seconds before my pet moves out of danger.

Basically what Fuschia said: sword/focus works wonderfully in PvE. With that set, leveling will be a breeze, as sword/focus gives you very high DPS and about the best swiftness mesmers have acces to.

IMO, Queensdale simply has more enjoyable content than the other areas. It’s a lush area with many rivers, it’s more populated than other areas, and the NPC’s add something to the overall experience.

Most other areas seem to consist mainly of dirt and grass (kryta), snow and ice (shiverpeaks), dry plains (ascalon), or the worst, zombies (you-know-where). Also, the NPC’s that crowd those areas are simply faceless creatures that appear and disappear again, without any real impact on the world.

I seem to like the jungle better, but only the low areas without risen swarming all over the place. Heck, I hate everything that has to do with Orr, except for the Omnomberries!

The mistake made in the OP is the assumption that 21 power adds 1% damage. It adds more than that. Therefore, power is pretty much the way to go if you want to achieve anything. It increases damage more than precision, unless you build super glassy with maxed crit damage.
IMO, the devs could buff the precision stat a little bit. Even with all the sigils procs and stuff, power seems to be more efficient than precision in creating DPS.

I agree with the OP. This is actually something GW1 was better at than GW2 imo. Some builds just become boring after some time. Even with the great amount of different traits, you’re still using the same skill rotations, over and over, especially with a class like the ele, that uses virtually nothing else than D/D with cantrips.

Only thing I did not like was, like others have said, the lag. Makes me unnecessarily miss jumps. The SAB would be pretty much perfect in its niche if this was fixed IMO.
How does SAB lag anyway? It’s less detailed than Minecraft! O_O

1UP
Simply love it. I want those new worlds, and I want them NOW!

If the weapon would inflict bleeding, I would rather see it on the autoattack. One skill that inflicts 5s of bleeding isn’t going to open up condition builds.
But heck, I’d LOVE a ranged weapon for the guardian that could actually bleed and cripple!

Before this thread bleeds to death, here are mine (from a pve point of view):

1) Whirling Wrath
Great AoE damage with a short channeling time. Nuff said.

2) Line of Warding
Kinda surprised nobody submitted this one yet. It’s a bit easier to go around then Ring of Warding, but can be used on the move and it’s ground-targeted. Oh, and it’s just so kitten good to fully channel Empower while hordes of Risen flail against your blue wall in vain.

3) Wall of Reflection
Pretty much never leaves my bar. Makes ranged mobs destroy themselves while you destroy the melee ones. Seems like a great division of labor, doesn’t it?

If this is only about PvE, I would really recommend Sweet Revenge (Discipline VII) in open-world PvE. This will make you virtually invincible against normal mobs! Even if they down you, you’ll have 15 seconds to save your own butt!

Against bosses, the vigor on stance would probably be better though…

PowerCat.5738:

That would be overpowered, and is the exact reason why it only blocks one hit.

Aegis is already extremely powerful as it is, it doesn’t need any boost.

Aegis is, in my opinion, extremely overrated by the developers and some players. It has the same effect as Blind (it negates one hit), only in the form of a boon instead of a condition. Still, Aegis can be given only on a much bigger cooldown. For example, take Courage. Negate one hit every 90 seconds. How is that extremely powerful? Blinding Flash does the same on a 10 seconds cooldown, with the same casting time (instant)!

I really like the idea of the OP. It would actually make it viable in larger groups. However, how fun would it be to make Aegis stack in intensity? Would probably be morbidly overpowered, but just think of the fun, trolling that thief to death by blocking his Steal, CnD AND Backstab.

Right now I’m assuming you are still low level (about 40 max). In low areas, warriors are incredibly easy. Take a greatsword, an axe with whatever offhand, and a longbow for great groups of enemies. Spend your first 10 trait points in Arms to get the “Deep Strikes” trait that gives 40 precision for each unused signet. Take full gear with +precision.

Simply equip as many signets as possible (especially healing signet) and roflstomp everything with 100% crit chance! In higher levels the influence of Deep Strikes diminishes though, so enjoy it while you can!

Right now, dodge rolling is bugged in 2 ways:

1) Sometimes, as the OP described, you will enter the dodge animation, but you will not actually roll away, you will stay at the begin of your roll. This killed me sometimes against groups of etins

2) When you roll, you should be invulnerable. However, there are a few frames at the beginning of a dodge roll in which you are not invulnerable. I have tested this myself with the knockdown attack of risen brutes. I could roll and spend endurance on a roll, but still be hit and knocked down.

Rolling is an essential part of GW2 combat, so please Arenanet, solve this issue with haste.

I can confirm this bug. I rarely use the mailing system, but the last three times I tried mailing something, the recipients did not get their mail either. I believe the bug got so bad that mails fail more often than they succeed.

Right now, there is no reliable way to give an item to a friend. Please Arenanet, look into this with haste, and until you do, at least warn players that mailing is bugged at the moment. What if people start mailing really valuable items, like exotics?

Although I think an on-effect skill at every attunement wouldn’t be a bad idea, the only suggestion you give (3 stacks of mght) is completely in the wrong direction. It would only further encourage boon stacking eles, which is kinda the only setup that works really good atm. Which means Arcana would become even more mandatory then it now is (so there would actually be LESS flexibility)

I think they would do better to just lower the cooldown of all attunements to for example 12 seconds, and lowering the effect of Arcana to 30% recharge rate max. If they give us good traits in currently unused lines as well, we would be fine IMO.

The drops are nice, but an extra reward is even nicer! :P

Anyway, thanks for the reply! Guess I’ll be doing more Toypocalypse instead then.

Since the beginning of Wintersday, I have been doing Tixx’s Infinarium every day. In the five racial capitals, I got a big reward after the mini-dungeon once a day (wads of enchanted stuffing or magical glue, a heap of silver, and a toy frame).

However, since Tixx has landed in LA, I only seem to get the reward for completing the mini-dungeon more than once a day (a choice of wintersday gifts: 5 small, 3 medium, 2 large or 1 gaint). I tried the mini-dungeon yesterday and today, with the same result.

Could anybody tell me if this is intended? Does anybody still get the big reward?

OP was trolling. No need to reply seriously.
My work here is done.

boozer.7815:

Bean Muncher.5197:

@OP: if you want to go Auramentalist, I would defninetly go 10/10/10/30/20.

That build adds up to 80 points, which is not possible.

Perhaps you mean this build -

(copy/paste link)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhMmYbvxygjEAkHtYSJjCgIK8QRxM8A;TwAg0yoEQJhSFlCKquMeJ8y11Qk5HA

I can’t open this link, but I meant 0/10/10/30/20. Thanks for correcting!

@OP: if you want to go Auramentalist, I would defninetly go 10/10/10/30/20. This way, you can actually vary your build a bit from time to time, and still be very effective. The water magic grandmasters can be used either for solo play (cleansing water is a great self cleanse), or for extremely good support (powerful auras of course).

Also, don’t forget that water magic gives you around the same amount of offence as fire magic in this build, because you deal +2% dmg for each boon, and you have loads of them!

I love the style of the ele, and really enjoyed it all the way to lvl 80. But now that I landed in Orr… I’m simply too weak. I can’t aggro more than 1 mob, and even a single mob takes more than 1 minute to kill. Everything goes so extremely slow that sometimes mobs respawn in my back.

We do really need a buff. Not in spiking power, but in utility and sustained DPS. Of course, it’ll be difficult to do this, but hey, Arenanet did a great job so far, trust them!