Guild Wars 2

Ugh I was thinking vulnerability increases condition damage lol. So scratch what I said about Weak Spot.

About staff being decent at conditions, don’t count on it. It’s simply not a condition weapon and only 2 skills apply them – flame burst and eruption. Dagger on the other hand, makes for a good alternative to scepter.

faeral.7120:

Marks is a terrible line. Wilderness is a phenomenal line.

Power coefficients are reduced due to pet system. Condi coefficients are not reduced due to pet system.

Storm Spirit does not scale with Power dmg. Sun Spirit scales with Condi dmg.

Notice the trend? Ranger cannot mathematically escape Condi spec.

I took 1 quick look at Marks traits and…you have my sympathy.

Make it part of our class mechanic to have the short, unique buffs rather than just having it be a limitation like it is now.

I doubt ANet would add confusion and Torment for us. That would simply add complexity to this class that’s already difficult to balance. Since they love small changes, I’d suggest 1 or more of the following:

Add bleeding to Water auto-attack for Piercing Shards trait.
Add burning to Fire Shield to affect everyone around you.
Change Flame Barrier minor trait to have a chance to burn on every hit you make.
Increase chance to burn on Burning Precision, or increase damage of burn
Redesign One with Fire. Staying in fire with Scepter (a major condition weapon) with horrid auto attack is just not good.
Move Weak Spot minor to Adept. Decrease proc chance to off-balance a little, maybe 40%
Increase proc chance on Arcane Precision to at least 20%. 10% is just… wth man…

1 problem is all 3 condition-based minor traits are in Grandmaster-tier, and our most-used condition stacking is in Earth and maybe fire, which is why I’d really like Weak Spot to be moved down to Adept to give air some way to help in nondirect condition damage via vulnerability.

Lava Axe is now my favorite new toy alongside AWave and LF with a tankier 10/0/0/30/30 build with Celestial/Soldier’s amulet. The axe really helped achieve that perfect balance for me to provide water blasts/dodge roll for defense and might for offense. Even the auto attack isnt too bad compared to Fire 1 since it travels much faster. Now I can easily give 7 stacks of might at the start of a match – a coordinated team should easily get over 10! Only bad thing is my pug teammates always pick up my 2nd axe and sling 2 wasting the blast finisher lol ><

I just gotta say Earth 4 is probably the best troll skill in the game. Many times someone would charge at me even with Eruption underneath them, than SLAM, a rock wall comes up at their face sometimes twice as they try to run forward again. Equally hilarious chasing someone and watching them slam face first against it, or using it as a “tripline” for someone stealthed – see the wall erupt? Nuke that area fast. If they walk around it I can still Air 3 towards the wall, too.

Yea I tried 30/30/0/0/10 full zerker but found it too be too frustrating even though I can wreck groups. Even in hotjoin there’s always gonna be a thief who targeted me first. Really, anyone who came at me meant I had to run or start kiting, which means I’m not doing AOE where I need to. And I was hesitant to use any CD’s for fear of someone coming after me. A few times I also became victim of being rez fodder when a thieve instagibbed me and rezzed like 3 guys I meteored Plus necros, guardians, and sometimes warriors can still facetank me long enough to make me run. But when things go my away a little, all those pretty numbers become worth it heh.

Good point at predicting movement better when targeted. I think it’s most important for landing that Static Field if you cast the ring right in front of them.

Awesome vid. How do you think you’d do with a staff?

Liked the video and commentary! I tend to try casting Eruption first then immobilize to save Static Field but is more risky to miss the CC. Have you tried Lightning Flash instead of Arcane Shield? I’ve always used LF for the shorter cd and utility to either run away, dodge/cast meteor, chase, or burst down someone.

I’ve been kittening around with Ice Bow for the redonculous damage but will try the axe – forgot it has blast/leap finishers and a rolling escape. Fire 4, Axe 3, 2+1 rolls from Energy Sigil, and LF makes for a perfect bail lol.

How do you go against bunkers or kiters? I can’t sustain against a bunker in a node and feel like I have to burst a kiter before they wear me down. Maybe the Celestial Amulet will make me more durable.

Even though I spend 95% of playtime in hotjoin spvp, I still have little clue what’s going on SPECTATING players. Things just happen too fast and half the time there’s little to no animation to clue you in (necro anyone?). Hell, spectating my own class with the same weapon (ele staff) requires all my attention focused on his skill bar to see what he casted. Now imagine watching more than 1 guy in 3rd person view where you can’t see his toolbar. Then imagine someone new or a casual to gw2 trying to make sense of it all.

Sorry Anet but it simply isn’t watchable as an esports. I watched a clip of some great moments in tournaments this year and all I can see is people getting downed, stuff blowing up, and commentators going “oh my god _ is going down” with the occasional mention of a skill being used. I can tell the commentators are trying and talking fast, but to explain a fight in real time is just impossible to analyze.

Take something like starcraft which I find entertaining but only with a good commentator. A bit slow like chess where you can see strategic play and movement, but still fast enough pace where the players are usually doing something worth explaining. GW2 simply has too much going on at once and you can do an entire commentary on just a duel to explain each and every move. Otherwise as it is, it’s like watching Smash Brothers (hell, that game is easier to make sense of if you’ve played it). Another analogy is watching a basketball game in 16x – you just see ppl getting downed/scored but can’t see the play.

For us ele’s, there is no xmas.

Mbelch.9028:

Biomanz.9302:

The reason why I think we’re such crappy roamers and is so difficult to set up our burst is because we’re inherently stuck to all our 20 skills, some of which still have defensive uses. Imagine a d/d having the burst close to a thief or requires less effort, but still have all the escape tools and heals. Or a staff user like myself going full zerker and annihilating groups of targets more easily but still have staff’s range of cc, heals, and escape skills.

Our defensive skills are limiting us, which is why we need some serious skill/trait/cd redesigns to break out that ‘master at none’ mold. But if that’s the intended design, for ele’s to not be able to specialize in ANYTHING, then that might be the reason ele’s are up in arms and aren’t wanted in serious tpvp where specializing is needed.

We are NOT crappy roamers. In fact, I would say we are just behind mesmers as the best roamers in the game.

We aren’t great thanks to big nerfs in SPvP, but you can still be successful there, but WvW is another beast, so that’s very wrong.

Maybe I got the wrong idea from some other posts saying thieves and mesmers make better roamers than ele in tpvp, but the rest of my points still stand.

The reason why I think we’re such crappy roamers and is so difficult to set up our burst is because we’re inherently stuck to all our 20 skills, some of which still have defensive uses. Imagine a d/d having the burst close to a thief or requires less effort, but still have all the escape tools and heals. Or a staff user like myself going full zerker and annihilating groups of targets more easily but still have staff’s range of cc, heals, and escape skills.

Our defensive skills are limiting us, which is why we need some serious skill/trait/cd redesigns to break out that ‘master at none’ mold. But if that’s the intended design, for ele’s to not be able to specialize in ANYTHING, then that might be the reason ele’s are up in arms and aren’t wanted in serious tpvp where specializing is needed.

No, don’t give us base stat increases. That won’t fix our gameplay problems. Ever try 1v1 as a staff ele? Have a dev try it against someone who knows how to strafe or zigzag sideways. It’s quite fun (not) having all your auto attacks miss unless you’re within 600 yrds away and air auto is just pitiful. Even with full zerker and 30/30/0/0/10 I can MAYBE do SOME damage if my opponent knows how to dodge and read my attacks (which are so so easy) but guess what, I drop so fast it’s not even funny.

There is no middle ground with staff to do decent damage with decent survivability – you either spec zerker to giggle at 4-6k meteor crits and die instantly (don’t even point at zerker thieves, mesmers, warrior, etc – they can survive much better in zerker with built-in class mechanics) or spec defensive/supportive on you guessed it, 0/0/10/30/30. So is staff intended to be strictly a support weapon or a zerg melter in WvW that needs to be babysat and safeguarded by others without a nil of self-sustainability?

The traits are the problem. Horrid auto-attacks across the board warrants more powerful skills. Yes we have 16 skills to play with, but with lessened effects and twice the cooldown as other classes. So why are our traits so marginal when we spend roughly 1/4 of the time in each one? We can’t specialize in any element for pvp (not like we should anyway with lackluster traits). Hell, one of the best traits, Fresh Air, requires us to switch OUT of air. We need MUCH more buffs to traits to get us out of Arcane.

Playing a zerker ele in spvp is for sick masochists.

Like myself.

Shadowfall.6543:

We initially had one, and a good one too.

Water would do an AOE chill, Fire would burn targets, Air would periodically strike targets, and I can’t remember earth (I think it was increased defense).

The removed it doing something in favor of spending trait points.

And I have no Idea why they thought this was good change.

That sounded cool. And the 15 pt traits should be made baseline, or Elemental Attunement. But am still thinking how other classes mechanics are all actively used but ours is…nothing? Maybe as you stay in one attunement a “charge bar” increases then when you switch you activate some charged ability for that attunement. Modify/remove the 15 pt traits. Just something that is inherent without traits.

I’ve been doing 30/30/0/0/10 for some pve plus spvp for giggles and can certainly dish out heavy heavy + single dps. Arcane wave being ground targeted is a huge boon for staff, too. You can guess the downside – you die from a slight breeze, and maybe sitting in fire for pve can get boring.

Our attunement switching seems to be so full of limitations compared to other classes:

Warrior: Adrenaline – On-demand burst skills and utility with traits that enhance the adrenaline aspect
Necro: Deathshroud – High self-sustain and master of conditions
Guardian: Virtues with on-demand utilities + tons of blocks/protection/heal spells
Thief: Stealth. What and mobility. King of burst.
Engineer: Toolkits with unique “special” skills
Mesmer: Clones and everything is centered around them. Just beautiful.
Ranger: Pets, ok I got nothing.

Then elementalists. What exactly is unique and beneficial to our attunement swapping? I don’t count the fact that we have 20 skills as a benefit since they all have jacked up cooldowns and subpar effects with the expectation that we can use them on a whim. Adaptibility? Sure, but other classes also have decent ways to adapt with each weapon set that actually plays well with the weapon’s playstyle, IE guardian’s Binding Blade into Whirling Wrath. An ele will have to dance around attunements they don’t specialize in just to chain clumsy combos. And with the high cooldown on switching attunements that hamper using the right skill at the right time which seems to be our key strength, it is highly contradicting. IE I just switched from staff Earth to Water for a quick heal but do I stay in Water for the Frozen Ground for when that warrior jumps at my face and do no damage, or risk it and go Fire or Lightning when their CC skills are STILL on cooldown? There’s so much risk at every move we take compared to other classes and for the subpar reward for simply surviving with, again, our low hp and armor/mobility.

This dancing around makes specializing in traits lackluster, hence why so many seem to choose the Arcane line. So shouldn’t our attunement trait lines actually be stronger to balance the fact we can’t stay in one attunement for long? Why do we have one of the lowest hp and armor (less than friggin MESMERS) but have no significant, unique utility on our class-defining attunement swap? 20 skills that work decent vs 10 that work great should balance out, no? Either buff our fire/air/water/earth traits heavily aside from the ones we already “default” to, or have big effects with negative ones, IE Internal Fire do 20% more dmg in fire but take 10% more damage or lock out water attunement for X seconds. The longer I play the ele the more I feel burdened by our class mechanic, having to work twice as hard than other classes for the same results. Oftentimes I spectate others in spvp and just sigh when they just mash on 3-8 skills for a kill, some simply just auto-attacking.

There are so many bad traits I can’t choose which 5 are tops or even where to begin…
Any “reduce skill cooldown by 20%” – on one of 4 “skill” lines. On Master tier to boot.

Flame Barrier and One with Fire. Really, what kind of sick masochist designed these 2 together? First you gotta get hit to activate at only 20% chance, and the MASTER trait requires staying in fire?!

Each trait by itself doesn’t seem THAT weak, but they just don’t synergize with other lines well at all. Each attunement is like in their own little world waiting to be used. I don’t see the same limitation on any other class where traits usually enhance their base mechanic while our only trait that seems to do so just got moved to Master tier…

Always around 11AM PST time I get skill lag. I cast a skill and it stays flashing sometimes forever. Other times it goes off after a few seconds. Really frustrating. And it’s not my connection as other people were experiencing the same thing.

Build diversity comes with balanced and useful traits/skills and that is what I think ANet should focus on. It will promote player experimentation, less cookie-cutter builds, and make it more fun. There will always be a certain build or 2 optimal for top tier play, but if there’s another build that’s 5-10% less effective but is the desired playstyle for someone like myself, I’d gladly take that. Not to mention someone playing a build they actually enjoy can mean they play the game longer, and may even master it enough to contend with the current “top build.”

I absolutely hated vanilla WoW when there were cookie builds across the board and anything straying from that were just terrible. Big reason was crappy talents and weak skills. GW2 is much better in that regard but are still lots of traits/utilities that need adjustment (IE ele’s fire tree). Having a standard build also doesn’t really help promote experimentation – I always saw posts in WoW asking for the cookie cutter build and there were just no discussion on alternative playstyles or strategy. That makes pvp stale and frustrating when your class isn’t the FotM anymore.

I cry a little everytime someone simply evades out my frozen ground or any AOE’s. Seriously, if they’re rolling across a ground in flames they should still take some damage, and still be slowed on frost fields.

But the same can be said for any crit build. Any burst now is more risky due to increased uptime. Ever try to burst a warrior recently with their high amounts of invulnerability or a guardian that keeps blocking?

Cast meteor for the giggles. But today I tossed one down then finished up 3 guys that were already low while still in tornado. That made my day.

Yea I tried an engineer with flamethrower and had a blast even with a subpar build I came up within an hour. And I know there are other viable builds centered around different playstyles – tanky, turrets, bombs, grenades, cc, condition/power. And I’m itching to try mesmer again after abandoning it due to being easymode back then. I already tried warrior and thief and it’s just so much easier and more fun to do things. But I still come back to my ele for the staff AOE lol.. I guess that’s the only good thing I can do now, throw fields and watch groups blow up occasionally.

I used to be able to tank 3-5 guys no problem even with thieves around with staff, and would oftentimes 1v1 for over a minute with pretty even wins in spvp. Now I can barely hold against one competent player in fights that last under 10 seconds. I don’t know all the changes that’s happened and Anet can disagree but we definitely are much less powerful than before. I’m watching thieves gib players around all over the place, offensive guardians destroying 2 players at once with ease, warriors surviving better than ever, necros actually doing good damage, while I have to do twice the work for subpar performance. And now they move some key survival traits further down our trees?! Does any dev play this class?

You’re not alone. I played staff bunker spec near release and can easily tank 3-5 guys in spvp and still live, then took a half year break until recently and I can barely stand 1v1 against most classes with the same build. Other classes’ damage output have jumped immensely it seems while ele’s got stale. It’s infuriating watching other classes autoattack with a few skill press on 1 or 2 weapon sets to victory while I have to use twice the work to achieve subpar results. Now I just run zerker staff to blow stuff up for the fun of it even though I die to 1 backstab. Only reason I stick to ele is the playstyle and feel of the class, and don’t want to relevel another toon.

This change gave a much-needed ranged utility skill for staff users like myself, and maybe scepter too. Think of us staff users! I’m really liking it..

Can a moderator just….lock this pit hole already?

Nah, I’m referring to other necros lol. They just facetank everything we throw at them and doesn’t flinch.

me: elementalist
Most feared: Mesmer/Thief burst
Least feared: engineer

… I love it.

Also when they turn into a pinata too (Lich).

No, I actually don’t see all that much “spam” posts, maybe because of moderators. Rather, the posts are are usually quite fair. If you want to see real spam and whining, go to WoW forums.

Sometimes there are posts that just poke fun at something but may seem like whine/spam posts.

Shizzlenit.7648:

Pyrial.2917:

Why is it important to use your pve character? Grab a pvp one in which everyone has access to the SAME gear. Or is it you are looking for a gear advantage?

Which gear advantage are you talking about? A full exo set takes 1-2 days to grind out. Are you talking about ascended? Ascended is minimal better than exo and no, i dont have a single piece of ascended gear.

After 1000+ hours in WvW / PvE progressing my character and stuff i actually feel connected to it. When i go into sPvP it feels like i have to start all over again which is demotivating. It doesnt feel like im playing the same character i did for the last 1k hours.

Umm, you’re using the same character. Same look, same dyes. Just different set of armor when you begin. Besides, there are some gear that have different stats in pve and pvp.

Imagine spvp with non-80 chars that don’t have full traits. Good bye balance.

Make Heartseeker an aimed skill WITHIN a frontal cone. Seems to be like the obvious fix. No need to adjust damage, range, or cost and see how it plays out. Don’t see how coding this in would be too hard. Using this skill in succession makes it far far faaar too easy to track an opponent, and negates their positioning/escapes pointless.

in spvp, glass staff can be fun, but you wont be 1v1’ing anyone. Don’t even try “semi-glass” – either bunker or full glass.

There are sometimes things that are quite obviously over the topic games. Ie widow mines in starcraft and reaper usage which the devs said they will change.
Here, it was moa and engy grenade dmg, just 2 off the top of my head that got changed. Now Mesmer time warp and portal making them a must-have class in tpvp? That’s fast approaching something that needs looking into.

Either way, OPs posts always is just an overly written message:
L2P
Yea, ok. I already I saw his arguments in his moa thread.

Sometimes the most “qq’d” about things are the ones needing the attention by devs.

Thorondir.9138:

Ross Biddle.2367:

So I went and had a read of that QQ timewarp thread. It was a sad sorry thing, and I have to tell you, I saw a lot of talk of OP and “cheap”, yada yada yada. I hadn’t seen such a concentrated group of scrubs in a long time, but I’m also not surprised.

So let’s talk tactics. What you QQ’rs need is to break down what’s going on inside a timewarp, and come up with some actual valid counters to it. I’m not the master of all PvP combat, but a couple things are so stupidly obvious I shouldn’t have even needed to come here to say so.

Yes, running away is a valid tactic, like it or not. But let’s move beyond that.

Confusion: You can expect within a TW for your enemy to spam his skills. In fact he’ll be firing them off so quickly he probably won’t even stop to check what he’s doing. If he is, he might have rinsed through them so quickly it’ll be to late. Confusion will chop a person in half, even in sPvP. Look into it. It’s amazing.

Retaliation: Getting smashed by TW? Well, so can your enemy. Retaliation exists to punish your enemy for trying to punish you.

Got confusion AND retaliation? Well guess what, TW is as much a problem as it is a solution. Your class/group loosing against a TW using mes/team? Build a better class. The options are there.

More ideas? I know they’re out there.

Interesting, so the counter to time warp is confusion and retaliation. I wonder what class is best suited to provide both confusion and retaliation?

Sounds like a job for a mesmer.

You forgot guardian

Plus it takes time to stack a good amount of confusion even for mesmers so the quickness would’ve done their damage already. Or if you mean chaos storm.

All classes can be strong depending on your playstyle. Pros and Cons also depend on your traits and skill selections.

There is no such thing as healer. There are tanks aka bunkers, and dps aka roamers. Certain classes are better at these.

There’s no spamming of skills asap or waiting for procs. Here, you have only a limited amount of skills so use them with…intent.

RyuDragnier.9476:

You’re forgetting something. The ranger can only go into a downed state 3 times before he’s out of commission completely. I agree the glitch is wonky (I’ve had it happen to me), but you can still take him out by making him waste all his ‘downed’ time. Plus well, it takes 8 seconds for a downed ranger to use Lick Wounds. Within those 8 seconds the first time, you may get him close to death. The 2nd downed, you’ll probably kill him because he can’t get his pet to heal him in time.

May be true, but it takes well over 8 seconds for me to take him out which is enough time to use it. Once he does, there’s absolutely no chance for me to finish him off. The regen is simply too high, like 1 person rezzing on land.

In my case, he was at literally 5% downed with the 4 of us beating at him, then suddenly his hp went up up up up up. I counted 10 sec AFTER a while, and he was at 50%. Talking about 20+ sec and he might even have ended up rezzing as I swam away to not waste my time.

Ranger downed state – once his pet rezzes him you might as well leave him alone. Twice we killed his pet, and his life still ticked up and up until he rezzed even with 4 (FOUR) of us wailing on him. Rediculous.

Thief spear 2 – Evade Evade Evade Evade Evade Evade Evade Evade Evade Evade Evade Evade Evade Evade Evade Evade Evade Evade.

Kitten.

Seems like you have a problem with the moa 5 skill.

I was on my ele tanking 2 guys no problem. Mesmer comes and pops Moa. I’m f’ed and get CC’ed/knocked down.

Solo? I get whittled down by greatsword spam, get Moa’ed at 60% hp, got pistol stunned as I was using that 5 escape with little stamina, got downed by shatter + some more GS spamming.

Insta gib thief easy if he messes up? I use any of my CC or teleport short of immobilize and he heartseeks straight back to me. Unless by “mess up” you mean his keyboard disconnects.

Yes, pros and cons. Moa locks your skills down for 10 whole seconds. Con is I can run away. Yay.

Saying ele’s water elemental is an i win button is too funny.

I’m convinced this is a troll.

What “trash talk” are you referring to in the forums? Most I’ve seen is the banter that X class is OP and the more hostile sounding posts (if you can call it that) are just trolling.

But I kind of agree smack talk can be good for any sport. I mean, it reflects on the players, not the sport itself. It only adds to the drama. Look at Idra in Starcraft. I love watching him ragequit in pro matches, and makes the pro matches more interesting.

2 2 second dodges? Stopped reading there…

Ok I lied. “Risky elite”? If by risk you mean the cast time, then I guess every class has risky elites. Not to mention Mesmer’s 3 elites are actually useful….

If Anet intends for this to be an Esport I don’t know why they has so little on the spvp side of things. No ranking, 1 spvp mode, and nothing on the cash shop besides tournament tickets and glory boosters. There’s nothing to bite on besides glory farming.

They will need to add tons more to spvp.

Phantax.1369:

TheUndefined.1720:

As a player, I really don’t feel that I’m priority at all. That, definitely needs to change this year.

This sums up how a lot of the playerbase feel. Anet are managing to alienate their customers and make us feel unappreciated !

:(

And how does Anet work on showing that the player is “appreciated”? …

I’m beginning to feel more and more that Anet is the one being unappreciated..

I don’t get what you’re demanding? The devs made quite clear they will be releasing info on what they plan on releasing/work on and the forthcoming content will be comparable to a whole expansion. Aside from bug fixes/balancing, they always told us beforehand content updates – halloween, lost shores, and christmas were huge content. And some saying for Anet to disclose what they’re doing with money earned is rediculous… Of course they had some accounting/sales figures that take into account how many people might pay to keep the game and staff alive, and are taking in info to evaluate, especially since the game is still new.

I can’t find one. WoW tried to be but didn’t take off. Is there a successful one that GW2 can aspire to be?

No, LoL doesn’t count.

NaturalPortman.9562:

leman.7682

(im a girl btw)

I don’t think that helps to convince us.

Has anyone tested how blind affects shatters? I’m assuming blinding the real mesmer won’t do anything but what about blinding the clones rushing in for a shatter?
Staff air 2 and roll blind would be awesome if so.

Make mounts have no effect whatsoever in gameplay. Make them only for cosmetics. If you use a mount you have no access to skills. You run and walk at the same speeds as unmounted. So they’ll be like town clothes you just want to show off. Activate swiftness or whatever signet and use the mount, flaunt around, and that’s it. Make it have a 10 second cd too so people dont dismount, recast swiftness and remount which looks stupid.

A 3 minute elite rendered useless/unusable/countered by a stack of confusion? Yeah, ok. Seems legit to me…. If that stays then how about Moa being cleansed by condition removers?