Guild Wars 2

If you look at the calculations people have made, the dps loss is pretty big. One thread showed that Soldier’s gear will have higher dps than celestial after the nerf.

IMO, d/d ele will be hit very hard by this patch. Celestial gear, which is popular with d/d eles is losing a ton of its damage output from the crit damage nerf. Boon duration is in jeopardy because the popular 2/2/2 rune spread for 45% boon duration will no longer be viable and so far the only known option for boon duration runes only gives a 15% bonus maximum. You will be cut out of the sigil buff because you only have 2 sigil slots and you cannot keep your bloodlust stacks after unequipping your dagger with the bloodlust sigil on it. Expect your damage output to be smaller.
Originally, I was looking forward to this patch, but after seeing all of the nerfs to d/d ele, I don’t think I could dread it any more.

At some point about a year ago, it was decided that eles were way to strong and needed a bunch of major “changes” to be “balanced.” I sifted through the patch notes and picked out the ele nerfs that I felt hurt the class the most.

• April 30th:
  -Mist Form skill: Activation now locks heal, utility, and elite skills.
  -Ride the Lightning skill:
  -Increased recharge increased 20 seconds to 40 seconds.
  -Recharge is now halved if the player strikes a foe.
  -Reduced the range to 1200 from the previous (hidden) 1550.

My opinion:
The mist form nerf made the skill almost like a “self stun.” It also increased the need to use more cantrips because you could no longer heal in Mist Form, reducing its usefulness as a survivability tool. I would still say that mist form is a very useful skill for buying time, though. The Ride the Lightning nerf was truly devastating. It made a once incredible skill easy to play around and set it on a ridiculously long cooldown. It also killed builds that relied on it as a form of survivability instead of water and arcana.

• June 25th
  -Lightning Flash: This skill is no longer a stun breaker. Increased damage by 50%. Reduced the cooldown to 40 seconds.
  -Cleansing Fire: This skill is no longer a stun breaker. Decreased the recharge to 40 seconds.
  -Glyph of Elemental Power: This skill is now a stun breaker.
  -Bountiful Power: Damage increase per boon on the elementalist has been reduced from 2% to 1%.

My opinion:
Before this patch, one could easily say cantrips were the most powerful of the ele’s utilities. I think the reason behind this is that they were the most defined category of utility the ele had alongside the arcane utilities. all of the cantrips were devoted solely to survival and therefore, they all had stunbreaks. After taking the stunbreaks from Cleansing Fire and Lightning Flash, it muddled the purpose of the cantrip utilities being powerful defensive skills with long cooldowns. To me, these skills no longer made sense without their stunbreaks. Lightning flash became the only utility teleport that didn’t break stun and cleansing fire became a weak condition cleanse. I added the buff to glyph of elemental power because it should have NEVER received this buff. Why would you give a stunbreak to a skill that’s purpose is to be active as much as possible? It doesn’t make any sense. The nerf to bountiful power made going 30 in water a less “powerful” option. Sure a 2% increase can be a lot, but then again, a 1% increase is barely enough to note and certainly nothing to write home about.

• December 10th.
  Water Magic V—Soothing Wave: Moved to the Adept tier. This trait is now redesigned to gain regeneration on incoming critical hits.
  Water Magic VIII—Aquamancer’s Alacrity: Moved to the Master tier.
  Water Magic IX—Soothing Disruption: Moved to the Master tier.
  Water Magic X—Cleansing Wave: Moved to the Master tier.
  Arcana VIII—Elemental Attunement: Moved to the Master tier.

My opinion:
I have no knowledge of what soothing wave did before, but it’s new design is not very special. I guess it messes up condition builds that use rabid gear when used in conjunction with cleansing water? I’m sure bumping all of these good water traits into the master tier made going 10 into water a thing of the past. Especially Cleansing Wave. Moving cantrip mastery down to adept wasn’t such a bad thing, at least. The Elemental Attunement nerf was fair enough. I’m just glad they didn’t take Renewing Stamina too and kill d/d ele in the process.

Conclusion:
I eagerly await an ele cdi. I was extremely disappointed with the dev’s lack of progress on ele changes over the past few months. I hope they look back at some of their previous changes and recognize that they may have been to extreme and should be reverted, such as Ride the Lightning’s absurd 40s cooldown. I’m not looking forward to the next patch and all of the indirect nerfs to eles it will bring (Sigils, Boon Dur, Celestial gear nerf). I’d also like to see less nerfs accompanying buffs on a class that is in a poor condition. I feel like that establishes a “3 steps forward, 2 steps back” motto, and it makes balancing a very slow and painful process. As a final thought, I think it would be really awesome if the devs started making a balance patch every two weeks like the living story patches, at least until the metagame is stable.

Was there anything that I missed? Do you disagree and think eles should be nerfed into oblivion? Keep your comments polite and constructive please!

I think you’ll find a 6% increase to be hardly noticeable. That’s like 2-3 points extra for each piece.

From my point of view, it looks like eles are taking the brunt of the indirect nerfs. Celestial losing it’s crit damage and boon duration is being nerfed on all runes. At this rate, I’m going to have to change all of my gear out.

Awww and I already made a dagger with a fire sigil for after I’m done getting my stacks too…

5/10 I sorta get it, but I wouldn’t have w/o the explanation and Googling the word “Thimble”

Kelly Kale (Thief)

I never knew boats worked underwater. Kind of “sinks” the escape theory. XD

Now would be a great time for Ally or someone to clear the air about this dilemma and soothe our minds before this thread (and many others) fills with negative comments and gets locked…

I’ve found, that in a WvW skirmish, Moa Morph can be used to guarantee a kill on almost any enemy. While Moa’d, you lose access all of your skills (takes away warrior healing signet). It’s even better than using immobilize on a pesky ele who’s keeping their team alive with water fields, as they rely solely on active defense. However, in situations where your enemy cannot follow up with extreme damage, this skill is relatively useless. there’s also the fact that the downed state gives the enemy an opportunity to be rezzed by a friend. Maybe moas shouldn’t have a downed state…

Expansion inc? I hope so!

Game Mode: PvX
Proposal Overview:
Ranger longbow lacks the tools that it needs to function for sustain or in group battles. Creating traits to promote the skills of the longbow and modifying the skills to synergize better with each other may improve the longbow’s performance in these aspects.
Goal of Proposal:
“Spice up” the skills on the ranger longbow to help it fulfill a more defined role.
Proposal Functionality:

• Trait: Splintering Shots: Creates an AoE effect on Longbow auto attack. Gives ranger longbow another method of fighting group battles.
• Trait: Torn Hide: Increases the potency of Vulnerability. Vulnerability is an abundant status on the ranger, but there are no traits that directly improve it. It would help make a rapid fire attack off a longbow exhaust the foes survival skills .
• Trait: Barbed Arrows: Increases Vulnerability duration. Same as previous explanation.
• Skill: Barrage: Enable cast while moving. As what should be a great kiting weapon, standing still for nearly three seconds makes you a sitting duck (especially against thieves). Unlike ele’s firestorm, we can’t teleport away while casting it. This skill ends up like churning earth, where it needs the effect of another skill to reliably work.
• Skill: Hunter’s Shot: Make it function like thief autoattack, where when stealthed, a different skill is available. This skill could allow the ranger to displace its location and confuse the enemy to keep distance.
  These are just a few suggestions as to what could be done. It’s not an all or nothing deal.
  Associated Risks:
  Vulnerability buffs may improve the ranger’s burst more than it’s attrition.

Game Mode: All
Proposal Overview:
Rangers lack Easily accessible condition removal, which seems weird, since a master of the wilderness should know how to cure illnesses. Also, ranger heals are underwhelming in general.
Goal of Proposal
Improve ranger heals to match their purpose.
Proposal Functionality

• Heal as One: Reduce cooldown to 15 seconds. Reduce cast time to 3/4 second. Heal as One is a bland heal with a long cast time. Reducing cast time and cooldown brings it onto par with its effects.
• Troll Unguent: Reduce cooldown to 20 seconds. Add a condition removal. As an antibiotic, it seems natural for this to remove conditions. Gives rangers a solid option to counter the powerful condition metagame of PvP. In my opinion, the cooldowns of all ranger heals are too long.
• Healing Spring: Increase radius to 360 (at least). Increase cast-time to 1 second. For a support AoE, its radius is way too small to help anyone but yourself without forcing everyone to stack. I never understood why the support AoE has the fastest cast-time, but nerfing it might a bad call considering ranger’s state. Its current setup really doesn’t match its seemingly intended purpose.
  Associated Risks
• Troll Unguent buff may make regen rangers too tanky
• Introduces another counter to conditions
• Rangers may trade out Healing Spring for Troll Unguent on their builds reducing its presence.

Game Mode: WvW
Proposal Overview:
Create a passive effect for ranger pets when stowed.
Goal of Proposal
Give rangers the option to put their pets away in an environment such as WvW, where they just get run over by a zerg more often than not.
Proposal Functionality:
When a pet is stowed, a passive effect will activate with an effect unique to that type of pet. For example, the Forest Spider’s passive would be a chance to apply poison on hit and increase condition duration. This would not interfere too heavily with the pet’s active ability because it doesn’t give the on demand poison the spider’s active can give. Swapping pets would allow you to change between two passive effects or one stowed pet and one active pet (for example, the passive of a Krytan Drakehound and the active of a Forest Spider), allowing for more strategic blends of the passives and actives. Make it so that the pet cannot be stowed or taken out in combat.
Associated Risks:

• Skills such as signets would lose their untraited functionality and may need reworking
• Traits that effect the pet exclusively would become useless, but this serves as an appropriate disadvantage to having no pet
• A passive effect has a good chance of eclipsing the pet in many cases
• A ranger’s #3 downed skill would have no functionality and would need an effect when the pet is not there
• Some pet traits that have no good use (master’s bond) may need reworking to even the ground

I saw an idea a few pages back that I liked and I wanted to build upon it. When the pet is stowed, a passive effect is turned on. For example, a chance to poison when a spider is your stowed pet. It doesn’t give the on demand poison or the immobilize the spider gives when it is out, so it doesn’t overshadow the active abilities of the pet.