Guild Wars 2

Wreckdum.8367:

Well since we’re going for balance. Since eles have access to 4 skill bars with all different types of damage and CC options. Let’s go ahead and give every other class 4 weapon sets that they can swap between. I mean it’s only fair right? Eles get 20 abilities and everyone else gets 10? How did this make it into the game and considered balanced?

It doesn’t work quite the way you think it does.

Eles have more skills, but many are situational abilities that would be included in an attack skill for other classes, and almost all of their auto attacks are worthless. Hop in the mists and auto attack down a heavy golem with a scepter. Is that what you want your AA damage to look like? Ele skills also have cooldowns 2-3 times longer than equivalent weapon skills for other classes.

Ele attunement swap cooldown is 16 seconds compared to 10 seconds for weapon swap, which forces eles to spend half of their available trait points in a support line to be viable. Needing to swap attunements frequently is often a disadvantage with on swap weapon sigils, because you trigger sigils when you don’t benefit from it (e.g. triggering sigil of energy when you don’t need energy).

There’s a lot more to it than you think and you probably wouldn’t want to trade off the advantages for the disadvantages in most case.

Do you have any plans to balance the extremes of bunker/burst by implementing meaningful diminishing returns instead of focusing on changing skills (which affects all builds, not just the imbalanced ones).

They could fix it by making it ground targeted… Oh wait.

My human staff ele uses Avatar of Melandru in WvW.

You get a 10s water field that heals for 3500-4000 and 1200 range AoE grasping roots (immobilize + damage) that last for 20 seconds (or until destroyed). How is that not one of the best abilities in the game for WvW? The AoE condition removal and protection abilities are not bad either.

What do you think is the best weapon sigil to use with a staff once you’ve built up 25 stacks of bloodlust/precision; battle, force or fire?

I wanted a ranged AoE class with group utility for WvW.

Forzani.2584:

There will be Thief adjustments. I know Anet is slow and steady with any changes but it will come.

Daoc in it’s first couple of months was just as bad. Assassisn could one shot someone in a group of 8, and not unstealth because it was a one shot. That was fixed just like this crap will eventually be fixed.

What makes you think there will be any adjustments?

ANet

Q: Do you find any profession to be out of balance like Ele bunker, roamer, thief one shot combo, mesmer portal?

A: Ele bunker is really strong, on our watchlist
Mesmer portal is giving us problems –giving that tool onto other classes maybe?

It doesn’t sound like they see anything wrong with this damage being done in under half a second. Even when thief was on their watchlist, they only made minor adjustments.

They seem to think the problem was fixed with the CnD and Assassin’s signet nerfs. Don’t expect a change in the near future.

daydream.2938:

Umm any kind of a bunker? THE one time i ran into Pz they where running double ele.

Not every ele is a bunker.

Ele is a popular roamer because of its mobility and there are some who like to play it as a burst damage build, survivability be kitten

Benjamim.9120:

i would love to change to offensive….tried many times but got one shotted by everything….

I’ve found a happy place in the middle ground. Too many people think that you have to be either one extreme or the other to be effective, but the 0 10 0 30 30 and 0 10 10 30 20 build with berserker gear has enough survivability to avoid instant death and enough punch to drop targets in a reasonable amount of time.

I win the same 1v2/3 fights that you see the youtube bunkers do, but the fight only last 1 minute instead of 5. It’s amazing how much easier it is to tank 3 people when one of them is dead after the first 6 seconds. ^.^

jobah.7241:

People in here are pathetic.

Maybe you should ask yourselves: what is it exactly that makes me mad, dissapointed and so pathetic? Is it A-net telling me that they are going to look at a few AoE-skills? Or is it perhaps because im investing too much time playing games and need to get a real life?

Please take a deep breath. You know NOTHING about what A-net is going to do. They probably don’t even know themselves yet.

But sure, A-net only exists to make your life miserable.

You may want to rethink your post. “Pathetic” would be throwing out childish taunts and insults.

Grow up.

Wreckdum.8367:

You give ANet way too little credit. What did they say in the live stream? Whenever they nerf… They bring something else up in line. So if your AOE gets nerfed they will probably retool your abilities to give you more single target DPS.

You give them way too much credit.

What did they “bring up” when they neutered Evasive Arcana?
What did they “bring up” when they nerfed the damage on grenade kit by 30%?

ANet has long since taken all of the good will people had for them, wadded it up, set it on fire and thrown it off a cliff.

Nerfing AoE (not just on the ele), shows a clear disconnect in how the game plays and how the devs see things. Their disconnect with reality is doubled down when they talk about AoEing downed players as a problem. If a bunch of horribles want to run up and try to revive people under heavy AoE , that is a massive L2P issue, not a game balance issue. Use a rez signet like a halfway intelligent person. Push enemies back or suppress them with counter fire before you attempt to revive.

It’s not just their conclusion that is terrible, it’s the incredibly ignorant and nonsensical logic that they use to validated it. ANet has shown repeatedly that they don’t understand how to balance the game. When they come out and say that they plan to make a shockingly bad gameplay adjustment like this, everyone should be up in arms. They’re clearly not going to reach a good decision on their own.

Most likely engineer

http://www.tfportal.de/gfx/news/update-news/telelvl1.jpg

Water XI plus Healing Rain (Staff water #5) is an AoE condition cleansing machine. It grants regeneration 3 times during its duration.

Water VIII water proc works, but procs before fall damage is applied. So, unless you’re in combat and already injured you won’t receive healing.

Physical projectile attacks can exceed their listed range. Staff fire #1 can reach further than 1,500 range.

silvermember.8941:

While I am a little nervous there is no reason to freak out until we actually see what is going down. Preempted QQing only means you unnecessarily tired.

I think this is the final straw (anvil?) that broke the camel’s back. You can’t create a class with almost 100% AoE damage and then nerf AoE damage. They won’t be competitive.

ANet doesn’t know what they’re doing. If this goes through, it’s game over.

Threatening to quit a game w/o a sub, Good luck to you.

Just to add, people that usually pull stunt like these are 83% more likely to be a paying customer in the first place. So really nothing of value was lost.

Just to add, making up random statistics doesn’t help your argument.

The game’s long term monetization strategy is to sell gems, and eventually paid expansions. Guess how many gems and expansions people buy after they give up on a developer/publisher and blacklist their company forever. ANet/NCSoft is about to get lumped in with Blizzard and EA for me.

An MMO needs a stable population to stay alive. Outside of primetime, sPvP has a few hundred people playing out of over 2 million boxes sold . I haven’t been in overflow outside of LA in months. I haven’t waited in a WvW queue after the weekend rush since October.

“Nothing of value was lost” indeed. Who needs customers?

Gaudrath.6725:

@Caffynated, I have been here, and seen the wailing, and lo and behold, despite that bug fix we elementalists still managed to dominate the bunker field with D/D just as before. And staff ended up being used as a support weapon, as it should be (not sure what will it end up as after the next patch, we’ll see when we get the notes).

Ele bunker is nowhere near as good as a guardian. People bring an ele bunker because he can beat the enemy to their close point and keep them from capping it, or because the players just like ele/suck at guardian.

Gaudrath.6725:

The ele community must really be traumatized, the amount of preemptive tears here is amazing.

You must not have been here when they nerfed evasive arcana a few months back. They said they were watching some ele bunker builds, and everyone thought we would get some adjustments. Then, BAM no blast finishers and staff bunkers haven’t been seen in competitive play since. An entire build erased from the game.

When it comes to ANet and elementalists, prepare for the worst and expect them to surprise you with something even more drastic.

Med.6150:

Not that I disagree with burst being too high for this combo and some others out there, but it doesn’t help your argument when you exaggerate so dramatically. 24k+ damage to “anyone who isn’t full bunker with protection up” is such a folly. 24k would only be possible to people who run full glass cannon and lucky crits on both steal and C&D and you’d actually have to proc lightning strike in order to get them below 50% for the following backstab (which would obviously have to crit as well).

This, by itself, means that you are hitting somebody with way less than 18k HPs, let alone 24k.

You are not going to instantly kill anybody with protection up, even if they run full glass cannon ever on the other hand, as you will never get them down to “Executioner” range for the backstab with Steal and C&D.

My tests were against an elementalist roamer with just under 18k health and 2200 armor in sPvP. It did not include a damage sigil proc. 24k damage is definitely a realistically attainable number.

Like I said though, it’s pointless to argue about it at this point. The devs understood exactly what the build/combo was capable of as far back as October and have decided that they’re not going to change it. They were asked point blank yesterday if the one shot thief build was overpowered and they said bunker eles were OP. It’s here to stay until Sharp loses his job or the lights go out at ANet.

The problem with CnMugD -> Backstab:

The combo with quickness takes ~250-300ms (milliseconds) and deals 24k+ damage to anyone who isn’t a full bunker with protection up.

Most people are playing GW2 with a ping in the 150-300ms range (even if their latency is lower in other games), and the average human reaction time (for something they’re fully expecting) is 200-225ms.

Add that together and your best case scenario for reacting to CnMugD -> backstab is 350ms. That is longer than the combo takes to pull off, so it is literally impossible to avoid. Add the ability to initiate the combo from stealth (timed to go off just as stealth expires) and you can’t even avoid it with anticipation.

That’s why CnMugD -> backstab is imbalanced.

Even a damage nerf isn’t enough to fix what’s wrong with it. The way that the skills interact is fundamentally broken. The devs knew what had to be done to fix this as far back as October and they’ve simply decided not to.

I liked your use of terrain. Most people would have died in those situations.

You need to work on landing your attacks better, and not wasting some of your important abilities like updraft in situations where it doesn’t really benefit you.

Preen.5914:

Ok, why is the majority here talking about bunker D/D while bunker S/D is the real issue?

Mostly because they watched a WvW video on youtube.

They all play out the same way. D/D ele with negative damage jumps into a zerg, knockdown, cripple, chill and then run away without killing anyone. A few brain damaged people follow half way across the map, then it’s 5 minutes of a bunker ele wearing down (mostly upleveled) terribles who never dodge anything and often do amusing things like stop to harvest or pick up a skill challenge.

uwo.8197:

@Preen. Lots of people playing aura share, of course. I wouldn’t say the problem has to do with d/d or s/d. It’s the 0/x/x/30/30 builds with heavy heals, condition/stun removal and mobility that’s a little over the top. It just feels a little too easy.

I’d be curious to know from those of you who play lots of paids how well double ele teams are doing. Seems rather obnoxious. (I play ele.)

Aura share means giving up the bulk of your condition removal through water XI. It’s the center piece of the cantrip build when combined with water III.

StugLyfe.2134:

Fox Soul.4809:

now i will stop craft my legendary dagger… D/D ele will be nerfed as hell.
Some times i think that developers dont play their own game…

They all play thieves i said this many times.

Before today I would have said this was just a community myth.

Now, they were asked point blank if the instakill thief build was overpowered, and their response was that ele is overpowered.

Add in their insistence that AoE counters stealth (despite being openly mocked by the community) and now they’re nerfing AoE… What other conclusion can you come to?

SirDrygan.1823:

I am predicting staffs will be like this:

skill 1 staff no longer will damage enemies standing near the target
skill 2 area of affect will be reduce
skill 3 fire burst will only hit your target only
skill 4 only 50% change to cause burning
skill 5 damage reduced by 30%

There you go, staff ele will practically be nothing more than a statue in LA.

Those nerfs seem a little overboard, but they’ll be balanced by the extra 15GB of free disk space you’ll have.

Modimor.4319:

It will moast likley do the oposite. Seriusly, Meteor Shower as it is now is super OP. It’s a HUGE radial with a long range. Skills that does this amount of damage to so many people should be limited to PBAOE. skills.

I see solo Elementalist nuking down 12 lvl 84 mobs using 2 skills in about 5 seconds. Imagine how destructive this is in WvWvW when you have 5 Elementalist covering the same area. The areas should be smaller, for more dmg. Or be at melee range. Even at Melee range i feel the area might be to big.

Elementalists nuking down 12 mobs in 5 seconds with 2 skills… that can only hit 5 targets at a time…

Troll.

I think this is the final straw (anvil?) that broke the camel’s back. You can’t create a class with almost 100% AoE damage and then nerf AoE damage. They won’t be competitive.

ANet doesn’t know what they’re doing. If this goes through, it’s game over.

This is an uninstall level design decision for me.

I’m beginning to think that everyone saying the devs all play thieves is true and not just a community myth. The fact that we’re even having this discussion has essentially killed what little faith I had left in ANet and I don’t think there is anything they could do to get it back.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Because the only way to actually see/talk to people cross server is to meet them in a match. Basically, it’s more difficult to form groups, organize unofficial tournaments, organize “deathmatch” rounds, organize premade vs premade fights…currently, the only people you can talk to are the ~30-40 people in HoTM on your server.

I’m not sure of the solution. Cross-server chat? Better lfg tools?

You can form groups and party chat, guild chat or whisper cross server.

Just add people you like to PvP with to your contacts list.

Shanos.2459:

you forgot pure knockdown builds that dont allow you to get up ever. and with all your skills put on cd even death shroud the necros ability to deal with this sort of stuff well yea drop and find a new game cause it sux big.

Please share this “pure knockdown build” that “don’t allow you to get up ever.”

D/D ele has one 2 second knockdown on a 45 second cooldown, and one knockback on a 40 second cooldown. So at most, you will be knocked around for 4 seconds out of every 40. There are plenty of classes with more CC than that.

Earthquake requires the ele to be stationary and is telegraphed with a very obvious animation. Dodge it.

Quickness is more broken than the “ kitten gift of oneshotting” that was so maligned in WAR a few events back.

I still don’t understand how the idea of an ability that doubles the speed of everything you do (100% damage increase… wtf?) came up in a room full of (theoretically) professional game designers and the person wasn’t immediately fired and blacklisted from the game development community.

It’s that bad.

They just got back from vacation. We won’t see any major changes until February.

He’s talking about the sPvP servers. There are 325 total hot join servers with 20-30 typically being 80%+ full, and another 20 being used as dueling servers. The rest are generally empty.

It’s actually better now than it was a few weeks ago, though that can be partially attributed to the Winter’s Day sPvP mini game which was more fun than normal sPvP.

Bard.7215:

I’m not new to the class but to save time scathering through the forums as to why, I’m going to pretend like I’m new in this thread.

So is arcane required for any spec because It’s just too good to pass up or is it because the class can not function without?

I run a bunker 30 eath/ 30 water/ 10 arcane specilization that I like and I’m not sure why anyone would say it was bad because it wasn’t 30 arcane.

Thank you

Arcana is + boon duration and faster attunement cooldown. Boons and attunement swapping are the lifeblood of the class, so arcana is logically your most important line.

I don’t think 30 is mandatory, but 10 is with 20 being the flexible middle ground.

You’re not going to gimp yourself by shorting arcana, but you need to be aware of what you’re missing out on and plan the rest of your build accordingly.

blakkrskyrr.7413:

8/10. You look mighty spruce, but I’m not feeling threatened or ecstatic over that face. It’s rather simple.

The first is my guardian, the second my thief, and the third my elementalist.

guardian 9/10 – The bridge of his nose is a bit too wide. The beard is great. A man without a beard might as well be a woman.
Thief 0/10 for being a thief. I kid 9/10 – not a fan of the hair.
Ele 6/10 might just be the expression in the SS but she looks like she’s sniffing paint fumes.

My ele

I don’t think you could pull off 15k bursts with a bunker ele even with 30/30/30/30/30. You would still have to have gear that gave you berserker + soldier/cleric stats.

Aether McLoud.1975:

- Fix ALL the bugs
- Nerf some bunker traits but give glasscannon more innate survivability
- More damage overall, better scaling
- Make fire a viable traitline
- Completely rework staff to make it a viable 1v1 weapon
- Completely rework the conjures to make them viable (something like engi kits with a max duration)
- Give focus a mobility skill

+

- Improve Scepter and staff auto attacks (dmg and projectile speed)
- Phoenix needs to move faster so it’s useful outside of melee range.

Aether McLoud.1975:

- Make utilities besides cantrips viable

Signets need to be instacast (the ability to midcast with a cast time would be fine too) like Air Signet or Assassin’s signet. Signet of Earth’s duration is too short to use before Dragon’s Tooth without a bunch of +condi duration, and casting it after spreads out the burst damage too much(it often lets the enemy move away from DT before they’re immobilized anyway). Being able to cast it at the same time would be a huge improvement and no longer require two long cooldown CC skills to land a 6 second CD DT.

Glyph of Storms needs 1200 range and a shorter cooldown. I would take it in some of my builds if the cooldown was 40 seconds before quick glyphs.

So… was that a no on you posting a video of your God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals Elementalist?

I’m shocked. Shocked I tell you.

I am intrigued by this unkillable ele build you’re playing.

Would you mind posting a video of you winning a 1v4 or surviving a 1v8 against level 80s? Surely a walking god can come up with 20 minutes of unedited footage in one night.

If you don’t have a video capture card, MSi afterburner is free.

I’ll wait.

FourTwenty.4268:

Caffynated.5713:

Staff is great in zergs but is a very limited weapon and has some glaring issues.

1. all of it’s hard hitters have long delays. Lava font, Ice Spike, and Eruption can all do a decent amount of damage, but they’re easy to avoid in small group fights and even if they land, the DPS isn’t actually that high. Targets that I can kill in 1-2 seconds with D/D or S/D and 3-4 with S/F take 6-8 seconds with staff. Is that little bit of extra range seriously worth doing 1/3 – 1/2 of the damage and having your best abilities be easily avoided?

i think this is whats wrong. people see the DPS potential of D/D and they expect to be able to nuke people like that from 1200 range.

Sorry, that’s OP

So just ignore point #2?

Range is almost useless outside of zerg/wall fights. Every class has multiple ways to close to melee range almost instantly and then they have 2-3x your burst DPS and almost certainly possess better defensive capabilities. Who is going to win that fight? Hint: not the staff ele. Also, it’s not like other weapons are 0 range. D/D reaches out 300-400 range and scepter can reach out to 900.

You’re also ignoring how easy it is to avoid projectile damage by simply tapping your strafe keys as you run toward the staff ele.

There’s a reason that staff isn’t used by most of the better eles outside of zerg busting, while D/D is the FotM and S/D is still a favorite of tournament eles. The only reason staff still works against zergs is because people will compliantly stand on top of eruption, ice spike and lava font. When there are not 30 other red circles on the ground, people easily avoid that damage and then staff is just terrible.

Glass ele would be very effective if you could get condition removal outside of water. Ether renewal is too easy to interrupt, and cleansing fire/signet of water aren’t enough. You need good on demand condition removal or 1 immobilize is a free trip back to your waypoint.

I don’t know where people are coming up with this “no cannon” bit, but it’s just wrong. Ele (not including staff) does some of the highest burst damage in the game. Staff lacks fast casting, no delay abilities but is good sustained DPS because of the relatively low cooldowns on hard hitting abilities.

Crunchy Gremlin.5798:

people love that giant muff look on their girls.
trim that beast!

I’ll never be able to look at winged pants the same way again. >.<

I’m currently wearing CoF + Winged until I can get to Arah on a day when it isn’t bugged and inaccessible. <rageguy>

Staff is great in zergs but is a very limited weapon and has some glaring issues.

1. all of it’s hard hitters have long delays. Lava font, Ice Spike, and Eruption can all do a decent amount of damage, but they’re easy to avoid in small group fights and even if they land, the DPS isn’t actually that high. Targets that I can kill in 1-2 seconds with D/D or S/D and 3-4 with S/F take 6-8 seconds with staff. Is that little bit of extra range seriously worth doing 1/3 – 1/2 of the damage and having your best abilities be easily avoided?

2. range means very little in GW2 outside of zerg/wall fights. Every class has multiple gap closers, so every fight with a melee is a knife fight after the first 2 seconds (maybe a little longer if you invest in immobilize). At that point, you’re left holding a weapon that does 1/2-1/3 the damage of a close range weapon and have very limited options to maintain range against competent opponents.

3. staff has some nice defensive abilities, but they’re on such long cooldowns that they’re only useful once per fight and situationally limited. Frozen ground is awesome, but it’s easy to avoid and cleanse. Magnetic aura is only useful against ranged attacks.

4. obstructed! obstructed! obstructed! It isn’t an ele specific problem, but by simply tapping the strafe keys left and right as you approach a range projectile class, you can avoid nearly 100% of all projectile damage. This makes your fire, water (as if it wasn’t already) and earth auto attacks almost worthless, and greatly affects earth 5 as well. Considering how much of a staff ele’s damage comes from autoattack, it’s a big problem. At least air is still reliable.

5. Fire 3 and 4 need a decent direct damage component. Using fire 3 actually lowers the DPS of a power/crit build unless you’re invested 25+ points into fire for +10% damage vs. burning targets. Earth 4 needs to cover a larger area. Right now it can be jumped over and is effectively worthless.

6. Blasting staff is good, but it needs to effect every staff skill, including the blast radius of individual meteors in meteor shower (not the total area of MS).

Right now, there’s just no reason to use staff unless you’re fighting a big mob of people, and even then I often find the AoE burst damage from D/D and S/D are more useful. They do more damage, give you better defense, better mobility, and are easir to land your best attacks with (especially D/D).

Why use staff unless you’re in a fight where going into melee range means certain death?

Xeron.3745:

Bah, i dont get it. Why is everyone calling stuff OP if they cant handle it? (I do not mean necessarily you). I guess they dont even think about “how to counter” that. It was the same with Warrior 100b at start and now everyone is laughing about 100b Warriors.

I think its the same with time warp from Mesmer.

FOR EXAMPLE:
Lets say we are in a 5v5 Team battle in Forest of Nifhil at Keep. Mesmers of both sides are caping close point and move up to keep for Time warp to support the team. So when you see how the enemy Mesmer is using Time warp your Whole Team have to retreat immediately (ofcourse you will lose the point for a moment) to force the enemy team out of the time warp field so they will lose their quickness. Even if they still have it (lets say you got a warrior and a necro in your team) necro can pop well of corruption to remove quickness and warrior can use Greathammer F1 to stun multiple enemys ( ranger, thief, etc. can also help with traps to slow their movements). So now you turned the whole teamfight, make your mesmer pop Time warp and blow the enemys away (since all their melee and dps classes should be right infront of you, you should have no problems in taking them down).

Thats my opinion how to counter Time warp! and im sure there are still alot more ways to counter it. Ofcourse its just theory and needs alot of coordination and practice.

PS. sorry for my broken english. grammar and spelling

We’re playing a game mode that is mostly about holding a point and your counter to Time Warp is to tuck tail and leave the point letting the enemy have it.

That is the textbook definition of an “I Win Button.”

Shukran.4851:

ok so from 100% to 0% 2v1 in 3-5 secs can be considered hard dps or roflstomp TTK ?

In a game where thieves kill people in 1/2 second, and ele/mesmer/warrior kill them in 1-2 seconds, 3-5 seconds doesn’t seem that high.

I would prefer for the combat to be slower and based more around strategy and thinking instead of twitch, but 3-5 seconds is plenty of time to react and prevent the bulk of his burst. In the current game, this video doesn’t show anything out of the ordinary, and is actually lower than other classes burst.

Now, is the guardian too beefy to have that level of burst? Valid discussion.

So you weren’t being sarcastic in the last thread?

/faithinhumanity off

We have really different definitions of what 1 second is.

The first fight, you initiate at 0:12 and down your target at 0:16.
The second fight, you initiate at 0:42 and down your target at 0:47. You weren’t alone
The third fight, you initiate at 1:07 and down your target at 1:11.

The deeps is nice, but compared to thief, ele, warrior, and mesmer, 3-5 seconds is barely considered burst damage.

The build can’t instakill anybody besides a complete glass cannon. Against a medium golem it was only doing just under 13k damage, and left a heavy golem at 15-20% health.

You’re also less survivable than every other elementalist build and blew your build’s one escape to get into combat. No wonder you took lava tomb.

Putting all of your eggs in a giant glowing basket that everyone can see coming and dodge isn’t a good idea against all but the worst players.

Zantetsuken.9051:

Why would they be a joke? If his first hit crits, and subsequently causes burning, then he gains 2 x +5% damage bonuses.

Those are really the only 2 traits in Fire that complement his build, the Power is the main reason he has points in there at all.

Using two traits for a 30% chance to maybe deal 5% extra damage on 1 or 2 abilities is pretty much the worst choice ever. Sitting in lightning after you’ve popped all your cooldowns is terrible damage. The autoattack is lower DPS than staff and you would always be better off switching to fire after you burn all of your cooldowns. Ring of fire with a glass build can do more damage in 1/4 second than the air auto can in 3 1/2. Phoenix can nearly outdamage all of the lightning and arcana abilities used by itself.

Calls his build Arcane Lightning…
Doesn’t take Arcane Lightning ^.^

I hope your fire traits were intended as a joke.

MG moves me through and passed my target maybe 1 in 3 times. Otherwise, it’s working as expected.

RTL seems fine.

The only frequent situation where I seem to miss FG is when we’re on unlevel ground. The vertical axis hit box seems off.

Now fireball on the other hand. OMG.

Life as a staff ele.

I don’t like respeccing my traits all the time either, so I primarily play 0 10 10 30 20 and it can fit into almost any situation by swapping out your gear and a few traits on the fly.

For D/D WvW I use 0 10 I 10 V 30 III IX XI 20 V VI with power/toughness/vitality armor and + boon duration runes (2x superior water, 2x superior monk, 2x major water) and all zerker/zerker accessories. Weapons are berserkers with superior sigil of energy and bloodlust, with an extra with superior sigil of force for once I have 25 stacks of bloodlust.

1904 power, 53% crit chance, 56% crit damage

Utilities – signet of restoration, arcane wave, lightning flash, mist form, glyph of elementals

It’s a balanced boon/aura ele with moderate to high damage and strong condition removal. Be aggressive and keep as many boons up as you can for bountiful power. Don’t forget to whip out your ele before the fight. Air and fire do good damage. Air is ranged and stuns, fire has a blast finisher for some extra might in your fire fields.

For dungeons, swap water XI for XII unless it’s especially condition heavy.

You can also run S/D with this build. Swap out arcane wave for signet of earth if you have trouble landing your burst damage.

For Staff WvW/dungeons I use 0 10 VI 10 II 30 III VI XI 20 V VIII with all zerker/zerker gear and a sigil of bloodlust on the staff.

2036 power, 46% crit chance, 83% crit damage

Utilities – signet of restoration, Signet of Earth, lightning flash, mist form, avatar of Melandru

AoE group support ele with good damage, decent healing and condition removal and acceptable survivability. Dealing high damage requires enemies to stand still, use earth 5 and signet of earth to immobilize people for your burst.

If you’re human, avatar of Melandru gives you a 1,200 range AoE grasping roots ability to hold people in place for your AoE damage. It’s very strong because a lot of people can’t get line of sight to destroy the roots (or don’t bother/don’t know how) and just have to eat damage for the full duration. A stationary target is in trouble against a good staff ele.

Void.4239:

1shot kill combo’s need to be nerfed out of the game ( and that goes for all classes that can do higher then 10 k dps in 1 non-channeled hit )

I definitely agree there.

Fights that last a few seconds (or even less than 1 second in some cases) are not enjoyable.

The longer a fight goes, the less luck matters and the more proper play style and decision making come into the equation. With the level of burst we have now, one mistake means you’re clicking return to waypoint.

If he has init left to spam HS, and you’ve blown all your cooldowns, then he was conserving his resources while you burned through yours and it wasn’t really the even duel you thought it was.

Precasting hard hitting abilities with steal, quickness (for everyone, not just thief) and being able to stealth too often is really all that is OP for thief.

I would rather thief stealth last longer instead of having them burst every few seconds forcing you to go defensive while they’re visible, and then disappearing before you can deal any serious damage to them.

HS’s damage, cast time and range are all fine, but I don’t like that it basically plays the game for you. I can face away from my enemy and try to run away, but spamming 2 will always bring me back to the target if they’re in range. I don’t really see it as imbalanced, just not good gameplay.

You should never die to thieves that just spam HS though. The damage against targets over 50% health is low enough that you’re going to have time and options to counter it on a glass cannon, and the thief will just run out of init against a more tanky build. It’s one of the few thief skills that you can easily see coming and dodge effectively.

Initiative is fine as a mechanic IMO. If anything, all classes should have energy like they did in GW1 instead of 90 second cooldowns to balance their best abilities. A long cooldown doesn’t balance a powerful ability in a game with 3 second fights. It just limits how often you can fight effectively. With an init/energy system, choosing to pop a big burst damage ability comes at the cost of not being able to use another ability later.