Guild Wars 2

Next fractal 50 meeting, I will bring up how inexperienced they all are. Also I like how we have now defined that people who use party search are all inexperienced since they don’t understand the awesomeness of eles.

Now if you excuse me, I will go and join one of those parties (search text is “49 glf war/guard. 55 ar req”). They might be asking for heavies, but you don’t always get what you want.

The only place people directly asked for eles was SE champ box farm. The standard search text is “exp heavies, berserker stat”. But thanks for playing.

adozu.6398:

elementalist is in a very nice spot right now, viable or good in every game mode and with a decent build diversity whitout being OP.

Are you being ironic or honest?

Okey, I can do this too. elementalist has the highest defense in game and never dies. They can solo any encounter, and has the higest single and aoe damage in the game. Zerg trains in wvw is made out of 95% elementalists, and sPvP is 5 eles. In high end PvE, eles is primary asked profession in party search.

Has anyone tried it and seen any positive result? Do the pet just take buff aoe’s that could have gone to an ally, and do they simply get stun-locked by enemy melee trains?

By turning mini pets into account bound, the market is currently undergoing a massive speculative bubble. Was it wrong to assume that patch induced bubbles and crashes was something Anet tried to prevent by hiring economist John Smith?

Shadow of Azrael.1205:

Ele can kill heavy golem in 1 second ( 22k hp 2600 armor).

While ele can do this, it is not what hit rajule in the above screenshot. He got hit by Lightning flash→Air attunement→Lightning strike→Arcane blast→Phoenix.

The heavy golem kill is Hurl→Lightning flash→Earthquake→Arcane blast→Arcane Wave→Air attunement→Lightningstrike→Ride the Lightning

Ayrilana.1396:

The standard farm is 5 gold an hour. Two hours a night over a two months will get you enough for a full set of armor and at least two weapons.

Please don’t intentionally distort that in an attempt to make your argument appear to be more correct. You can not make a full ascended armor and two legendaries from 600 gold, and that assuming people would farm 7 days a week for 2 hours. Spending what basically is two work days per week on farming is not everyones cup of tea.

Lets pick a player who want to max a Mesmer. They want armor and a greatsword. The armor will cost around 600 gold by iteself, which already there is the whole aloted money with no weapon to speak off. Then there is the legendary, which is between 3000-4000g. Assuming a generous 250g per month (which is extremly above the average income per player), and you end up with 16 months or 1.5 years amount of farming. If you make the legendary yourself, the cost will slightly decrease, and you might be able to do it in less time.

Yes, you could change the variables and get a rangers that wields an underwater legendary, but we are talking about common goals which people actually has. Those goals are not achiveable by 2 months of farming.

If you count fighting a boss with FGS as an exploit, I will use the same languge for skipping the boss and running past them as a exploit.

FGS require you to CC the boss into a specific spot, position every party member to stand in the right position, and dodge instant kill aoe with minimal reaction time. Stealth on other hand just require using the key W and sometimes the jump button.

In the early days, many dungeons was updated to include doors in order to… you can guess… prevent players to use stealth in order to skipp content. Stealth + running, as with stacking, was not the intended within the design of dungeons.

Thus exploit. We could call it creative tactics if we want to use kinder language.

Most classes can do 11k damage in 1 second. If you want to try it out with guardian, use a full zerker build and grab focus and Judge’s Intervention.

Lets take a look at a set of few goals people have in GW2 and see what effect spending $ has.

Some want to have best gear by getting a full set of ascended armor and a legendary. They can then either go out and farm for years, or send anet a few hundred bucks and buy it directly from the tp. Without exception, the price needed in $ has gone down, while the time required in farming has gone up.

Best gear might not be everyones cup of tea, so lets look at skins. People can either farm for years to buy gems in order to unlock any of the new skins since release, or spend the $ to do so instantly. New skins has been almost exclusivly gem-based.

Others want WvW rankings. You can then either do it slow lane speed, or get fast lane option of 150% by gem purchases. you also can get competive advantages, like 5% damage and 5% defence. If you include those who tactically do server transfers, $ has an additional impact.

For those who goes after achivements, some points is to be gained from gem items (mini pets to mention one of them), but it is less of an issue if you are in a larger/richer guild.

Is this enough for a conclusion about the design of GW2? Everyone is of course free to their opinion, but the facts are stacking up.

This pick is a good example why gem items should NOT create trade able resources. It disrupts a player based market. It make the game look and behave like pay-to-win. It makes people feeling forced to spend money in order to “keep up”, thus gem purchases get associated with the feeling of annoyance. Its unique in the amount of hate the item got on the forum.

So next time Anet think it might be a good idea to have a gem item produce trade able resources, hopes goes that someone says No.

With two large nerfs hitting the class, it is good to look how it will impact which class one choses to play.

In wvw zergs, bringing my ele is still likely to be my primary choice since frozen field and water fields is constantly needed to adjust the fight into a favorable outcome. That is, until frozen field is nerfed.

My ele sPvP builds will be uneffected.

Fractals will be uneffected. The only boss that was partially FGS’able was Molten Furnace, and that boss is very simple with or without FGS.

For world bosses like Teq/wurm, I will likely switch to warrior because of the double spot exploit. It is hard to beat 75k 100-blades on teq, added with the utility of res banner and might shareing.

For all dungeons except Arah, I will switch to warrior. Arah feature less stacking and more stealth exploits which make ele equally valid as before this patch. AC might be an exception, but AC is so simple it doesn’t really matter.

There is many methods anet could implement to prevent tanking.

They could simply average the servers ranking from the period between tournaments.
They could assign league rank based on last tournament, swapping the top bronze with bottom silver, and top silver with bottom gold.
They could change the incentives, where rewards for bottom silver is better than top bronze.

Or just change the torunament setup.

Looking at a market perspective, the Shield Skin was a slightly better investment than gems. Without the extra tax on gems, they follow an almost identical curve.

The point is to get people to buy more gems. If they see that the option is either to farm an other month because the precursor price just jumped again, or throw 100$ and get the item now, maybe a few more would spend the money.

Everyone benefits from it.

I am 100% happy with trading the functionality of Dagger Storm for tornado and Supply Crate for FGS.

Comparing static field with an aoe skill that hits 5 targets once every second makes me wonder if that person ever used either skill.

If it worked as a static field that moves, it would be a great skill. Unlimited targets, unblockable, constant hitting on edge, static fields radius which is about twice that of tornado.

Sure, make me that skill and I consider using it.

Tornado will be in the same league of conjure earth shield. There is not a single aspect of gw2 in which it will be favored to use.

In WvW, it is a liability in which all party support and DPS is sacrificed for a weak kd aoe which has smaller area than lava font. If you are facing semi-competent players, or just a large enough group, they will have stability. All you will have done is removing yourself from the fight.

In PvE/PvP/dungeons, its useless, and often counter-productive.

Cutting the CD in half would be appropriate yes.

For WvW, FGS is good for supply runs, scouting, and catching up with zerg when dieing. For small fights, GoE is an additional stun and quite useful. If neither sounds good, bring race exclusive elite skills.

For dungeons, FGS will decrease you damage and whoever get fooled to pick it up. Lava font + fireball is superior damage over FGS 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 skill combined. It brings no utility beyond running.

Tornado in WvW prevents you from doing fields, prevents you from doing damage, and basically make you a mobile version of lava font, but without the fireballs or blasting staff. It will even be bad in karma train since fireball, lava font and arcane wave is superior for tagging.

With ever increasing gem prices, it would be nice if Anet tried to encourage more gem->gold conversion. A buy with gem button next to listed items would make a convenient way to see how much a listed item would cost if bought with gems.

FGS has returned to what it always was: A running skill. The best running skill, able to outrun thieves and warriors alike. Only cost a elite slot and 180cd.

Now tornado came out worse from this. That skill is not going to be used in any situation (pve, wvw, pvp, farming). It belong in the pile that conjure earth shield sits in, and if I see a player bringing it, I will whisper them with the advice to use something else.

Would a elite channel skill that gave 80% more damage for 3 seconds with a 150s recharge be considered OP?

If not, then just add this as a new elite skill (Glyph of Energy?), and let them have fun playing with tornado as much they like.

Removing the gamebreaking aspect has their benefits and drawbacks. I personally prefer having them around since its make the game interesting.

Extra credit had a nice video on this a while back called Perfect Imbalance (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e31OSVZF77w). So long the gamebreaking aspect don’t make every other tactic (or professions) pointless, I say keep it.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Ever played mesmer?

Yes, allowing guild members to skip content is why I leveled it up. Without such gamebreaking feature, I would unlikely play mesmer at all.

Gamebreaking features are sometimes good, as it hugely enpoweres those profession while making the game less dull. A good desinged gamebreaking feature is one that is unique, and which create a optional meta game to be played. Portals in wvw is good example of this since it make walls optional with a interesting hide and seek meta game. FGS and positioning bosses at wall does a similar thing, as is stealth and running inside dungeons. Reflect vs lupin is a special fun thing with arah, and double numbers spots on bosses is why warriors is heavyly requested, and is a core tactic for teq.

Removing it all would solve the gamebreaking, but also remove a ton of meta-gameing.

To get fgs over 75k, you got to get ticks worth more than 1.4k (75/68*1.25) on teq in order for higher dps.

Even at full zerker and max might, I doubt it for uncrittable damage. Sounds testworthy however.

The solution to everyones problem:

1# Enemies in dungeons can see through stealth.
2# All block and reflect skills is limited to five hits.
3# Give FGS4 a ic
4# remove portals from pve and wvw.
5# no more double numbers spots on bosses.
6# Cap damage at max 10k per skill.

There, no more gamebreaking skills in game. Fixed permentaly, and we can all go home and be happy!

Gokil.2543:

It’s galaxies ahead of all other means of dps

I just did 75 000 damage on teq with a single 100-blades. Please do a galaxy higher amount of dps with fgs and post it.

No one enjoys the current system of spamming “join on district” for 5m, 10m, 30m stretches in order to participate in an event. If one would put it to a vote, it would likely end up as #1 most frustrating aspect of the game.

We need a queue system. With it, the waiting would be durable to suffer, and you won’t try break the mouse in order to achieve a higher click-to-join-ratio per second. You can enjoy the game while waiting, rather than sitting still.

As a second highly asked feature would be to create fresh districts, but if we can’t have that, please still get us the queue.

Has not John and many others on this forum argued several time that there is no inflation since release, and precursor increased cost is only based on supply and demand.

Either they are right, and having a flat price would not had been unfair, or they are wrong, and the game is suffering from inflation.

When it comes to rare items that only dropped during a limited time, traders gamble on the question: “Will anet reintroduce it, and if so, when?”.

Is this an intended aspect of the economy and design of the market?

So guild missions are extra fun since this bug. You switch map, get the error, can’t guest because that makes the whole point pointless…. so you guild is kind and moves maps and we find a working server.

And it get full. Some days you can’t win.

Happened today again

ISP: Bahnhof
Location: Sweden
Server Region: US
Game World: NSP
Error code: 7:11:3:191:101 (double checked)

At Fireheart Rise, 2m from this post. All character trying to enter that zone is effected at this moment.

Everyone just rolls past them into swamp, to the point where its basically a area which no one has a reason to play. Please put Aquatic Ruins into second fractal rotation, and add variation for the fractal of the cost of making a new map!

Region: Sweden
server : NSP

Issue mostly located to LA. Avoided it yesterday by guesting FA.

Worked today in LA, but started again during a fractal run, where I could not load third fractal zone. I also triggered the bug when trying to guest a other server (DH today), since their LA could not be loaded.

Guide to trivialize aspects of the game:

There is a long path with no doors -> Get a thief and mass stealth
There is a boss with only range attacks -> Get a guardian to reflect
There is a boss next to a wall with non-instant kill aoe -> Get a elementalist to use FGS
There is a glitchy environment -> Get a Mesmer to use portal

Honorably mentioning goes to phalanx warrior for perma 25 party stacks of might, trivialize any skills that provide might. I would very much like to see user Tree above calculate the effect of 25 might stacks on 5 players vs the effect of two fgs under a 30s fight.

What Anet should do is to get rangers, engineers and necromancers their own gamebreaking mechanic, so every profession has one function which will trivialize a part of the game. Necromancers can negate fall damage, but its not very useful in dungeons so far.

If you want to remove gamebreaking concepts from the game, let start by removing that which enables people to skip content altogether: Party Stealth.

No amount of DSP can be faster than just running past the enemies. In several dungeons, Arah and CM to mention where most crimes are commited, more than half the dungeon can be skipped by stealth.

What is most dull, most stupid, most broken? Skipping foes and game mechanics by running past them, or a 180s elite skill that increase damage in two party members?

And when we fix stealth in dungeons, when will the uttery broken mesmer portals be blocked from jumping puzzles. Skipping content is the definition of gamebreaking.

NSP, where we fill a BL siege cap with omegas.

Happy ZoS Day!

No.

If you want ballanced down state, you got to first balance the profession outside downstate so each profession is equally down equally much. A warrior has almost double the health and armor than say a elementalist, and stays up a lot better in a zerg fight. Their worse downstate active skills is then ballanced with their improved passive health in and out of downstate (down state health is affected by vitality and armor).

They wanted to make a game where each class is able to do everything, but they also wanted the conflicting goal of sterotypical warriors with high health and mages with frail defenses. The result is a never ending road of balance changes in order to make it all feel ballanced while in truth such state won’t realistically happen.

When the profession is not used in PvP, and devs says a year later that it looks “rather balanced”, then and only then can one say that warrior has replaced elementalist as the hated profession.

The lower CD on armor of earth is nice.

The rest will have minimum effect for staff elementalist. Aquatic Benevolence might replace cleansing water for zerg play.

Spies and trolls can exploit blueprints by putting them on top of the supply depot square, completely blocking anyone from picking up supply until the prints despawn.

Those result should be taken with a large grain of salt since they do not actually say what that data is based on. Most likely, it is created characters which include storage alts.

As I see it, the statistics can not show that a profession is broken but rather that the design of 6 equal played professions is broken. I would personally prefer having as wide variance possible in fights, if the other choice is 40% of the players choose the same profession out of 6 perfect balanced professions. That would be fun vs balance discussion, which we can only have if we know what the statistics are.

Out of fairness and academic interest, it would also be interesting to know which classes has the highest win ratio in PvP.

Could you explain why a less informed discussion would be better?

Is your argument simply that a mono culture in profession choice is good, so any information to that effect would just distract by giving ammunition to those who disagree? That is how I read your comment, but I could of course be wrong.

(Please tune your passive-agressive tone down a bit. Try explain why you consider something wrong/good rather than go directly to hostility).

If statistics say 40% of players play class X, would that not be a very bad thing? Anet made 8 profession. Having to fight the same one profession 40% of the time sounds very boring regardless of why 40% of players pick the same profession.

Would a less informed discussion have a better time fixing the 40% problem?

sorrow.2364:

The FGS fix was much needed though.

Don’t get me wrong, bug fixes that makes the game more consistent is never wrong.

I just would like that when bug fixes reduced the usefulness and uniqueness of a skill, they get improved in turn to keep them equal useful and unique afterwards. Nerfs should only be done intentionally and not as an indirect effect of bug fixes.

When discussing profession balance, it would make a huge difference if we had access to PvP statistics regarding each profession. How much each profession is used, what the win/death ratio is, and in which game type.

It would save time and eliminate unnecessary arguments where one party says a profession is commonly used while an other say it is not. It would also focus the discussion on professions that is either overused or underused, creating a more balanced playfield with more variance.

By next update, both Meteor Shower and Fiery Greatsword will receive bug fixes that lower the usefulness and uniqueness of both skills.

So I wonder, will there be any corresponding buffs to balance it up, or will Elementalists just be less useful in PvE and WvW?

Kyon.9735:

From what I see it seems like people want an “easier” access to survivability that doesn’t require player skill at all.

What people want is for elementalist to be viable in competitive play (ie SPvP). How the developers reach this point is that extremely important as long as they do reach it.

Make buffs that require skill but which can reliable be pulled off so the class get used? OK.
Make buffs that are passive which helps get the class used again? OK.
Buff our health to be competitive? OK.

What is not ok is the current status quo of no elementalist in competitive play.

In a class that is not played in pvp, in a traitline that is not used in any competitive play, a new GM will potentially provide a blind every 5 second.

And its not like a blind every 5 seconds doesn’t exist already in other classes. Thieves can do it from a Adept trait which applies a aoe blind every time they stealth (and every 3 second while in stealth), and no even picks that trait. If it was godlike, apparently everyone is blind to it.