Guild Wars 2

Sadly, also after the latest patch, the out-of-combat animations of female human characters are still bugged. Although I have heard that the greatsword whirl-around-the-neck bug was fixed, staff still swings like a weird pendulum and clips through any type of armor.

How to reproduce:

1. Start the game
2. Select a human female character
3. Equip a staff
4. Run forward with staff sheathed

Note: this bug did not exist before the animation was changed in “the nightmare within” patch.

See this video for details:

If there is a warrior nearby they can also boost you damage using

- banner of strengh
- banner of discipline
- empower allies.

There might be other traits or skills that i’m not aware of that can boost damage

“some” damage is probably the right way to say it. That’s far from good, or even very good for that matter. 2400 Attack is going to get you nowhere, enemies will just walk over your stuff without noticing. Crit dmg and precision is also only useful when you have a high power value. Just look at the damage of lava font, even when critting it will likely do about the same damage as a full power build without crit.

Healing power is not as useful as it should be, most of your healing comes from the healing combo fields and your allies blast finishing those fields. When they do that their healing value matters, not yours.

500 condition damage is also not really a big deal. As an ele, you don’t have enough ways to apply conditions and not many stacks as well.

Glyph of storms also does not really fit into the build because it has only 900 range. This is a noteable difference from the 1200 staff range. The damage is rather lackluster as well. It does have a use in PvE when used in earth attunement however.

Traits like vital striking dont really matter if you dont deal enough base damage anyway. Also not getting “bolt to the heart” in air line is a mistake. That trait is really good, especially for an adept trait

Superior runes of altruism are not exactly the highest valued runes, and there is a reason for that.

Your build does not have any escape skills or stunbreaks either. The invuln on earth shield roots you and other than that is does not really have anything in that regard.

Given how many people complain that there are too many effects on the screen this might be very intentional.

Do you have more than 2 crafting disciplines on the same char? If that is the case you need to pay a fee to switch to a discipline that was previously inactive. Maybe you just added another crafting discipline by accident. Check the crafting tab in you hero panel thoroughly if that may be the case.

Regardless, if they changed it on purpose they need to complete the unfinished business and fix 2 handed weapons. Staff now has some ridiculous clipping when walking and that greatsword-around-the-neck bug is annoying as hell (don’t know why but its a real immersion breaker for me).

On a side note: I have to admit (although i rarely do that) that the animation looks good on my female D/D thief.

Gill Halendt.2038:

Kasmeer’s retractable staff – way shorter than any other skin available in game – is currently the one and only not piercing my Ele’s butt.

I wish I could understand the reason behind this change, but I really can’t.

Increase gem store sales? Just kidding….

Lucky.9421:

Conncept.7638:

That’s not even possible. This isn’t an MS paint picture, animation cannot be copy/pasted from one completely different model to another.

It is. Let me explain.

A moving 3d character in a video game consists of 4 types of files. The skeleton, the mesh, the textures and the animations. There is always a different animation file for each animation, such as running, jumping or punching.

The textures are mapped to the meshes, and the meshes are rigged to the skeleton. The skeleton consists of a set of vertices called bones.

An animation file governs the movement of the bones in the skeleton file and, subsequently the meshes that are rigged to it. These textured meshes are the characters that you see running around in game.

As long as the skeletons are the same, or at least the bones have the same names(some could be missing) the same animation can run on different skeletons. And different animations can run on the same skeleton, as long that they are addressing bones that the skeleton actually has.

In most games, males and females use the same skeletons for simplicity, but of course different meshes, textures and animations.

I don’t know what caused this bug, but you can certainly mix up animations by mixing up file paths or overwriting files.

- Edited for elaboration.

+1 for one of the shortest yet easy understandable explanations of how animation systems work.

notebene.3190:

I’d at least like to think, in lieu of an actual bug or mistake, that a change like this wasn’t made ‘for no reason’. That in a meeting, an animator raised their hand and said they were bored, and the response was, “Uhm, go change the human female running animation.”

The more I think of it, the less I think this was done on purpose. I could rather image that they were consolidating animation files and animation mappings and accidently mixed something up. With 14 days cycles of quick-hush-hush living story updates I can really imagine that their already fragile codebase was overburdoned, and some overworked, underpaid worker made a mistake when he was trying to clean up. I just read a confirmed bug report thread where somebody mentioned that all weapon stow sounds were gone. Its the same with the mixed up voices. No offense, but instead of living story updates they really need to get their stuff together.

And another bug report about this. He certainly does have some serious clipping issues as well with a staff on a female guardian: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Female-running-animation

They really need to tell us whether this is just a bug or intentional (and whether this clipping stuff is going to stay). This is not really about whether you like the animation or not, i want to know if that stuff is permanent. I want to know whether they just mixed stuff up in the animation files (just like the sound bugs where sounds got mixed up as well) or if this is done on purpose.

I think i’ll just create my own bug thread. Maybe they are not really aware that they just caused this with the last patch.

In the main discussion thread somebody has posted a video that shows the bugged staff animation very well.

Yeah, but they had a non-clipping version for 2 handed weapons just a few days ago. It really bugs me that they actively changed it with a clipping version.

The main problem that brought me here is also less the animation itself. Although it does look misplaced on a light armor elementalist or mesmer in a ballet dress I could even get used to it. My main concern is the problem is the very buggy staff animation when out of combat (as I have posted earlier) and the 2 hand sword whirl after jumping.

If they change animations (and it was certainly a change that nobody was asking for) they need to make sure that this does not introduce other bugs. But what they are doing is just change something, leave it in a half made, sorry state and then move on. You can’t even be sure that you can still do what you could do yesterday. I am beginning to become afraid of every next patch. Who knows what is going to be broken then? If they would just focus on living story and some pvp matchmaking issues I could be at least rather sure that they don’t break anything that was working before. Just look at stuff like the etherblade jumping puzzle, why is it broken now? Why did they change something there? Who asked for that?

Something that makes me even more sad is that they will likely just leave it at this broken state and move on. Just look at the bug forums how many bugs have been introduced with previous patches that were never fixed. There are even tons of bugs that were never fixed since release.

The thing is, we don’t even know yet if this was an intentional change. If it isn’t – it is a bug. If it was an intentional change they caused 2 handed weapons to clip and do weird rotations around the neck, so that is a bug as well. No matter how you put it – it is bugged. So why do they tinker with stuff that wasn’t broken when the chance is so high to get it wrong? It is not like it was simply neglected and broken since launch. Somebody actively changed something there (and not for the better if you ask me). So, I want to know as well if this was intentional and it is going to stay or if it will be fixed in the next patch.

I can see the difference really well. I made a few screenshots that i already posted in the bugs section. I hope you will agree with me that there is some clipping now:

Edit: somebody was way faster than me on this one. Regarding the video posted before: Although the video showed a female norn, the human animation looked the same. The staff was way more static and didn’t swing like a pendulum. I seriously don’t know why they changed this.

There are already several threads about this issue, so please stick to the already existing ones. One of them even got a red response already:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Jump-Puzzle-Bugging-Out/first#post3215688

It’s still a sad fact that every time they change something they break something that wasn’t broken before (in this case: clipping and weird rotations around the neck of 2 handed weapons – just check the tread on the bug forum). Given A-Nets bad record it is even hard to tell if the animation change was intentionally changed or just another bug. It is also nothing the playerbase has requested (at least not to my knowledge).

The same discussion going on at guild wars guru here (short spoiler: the thread creator wasnt happy with the change either).

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/87410-new-female-human-running-animation/

I could even accept the running animation if it wasnt for the fact that every 2handed weapon bugs out now.

Then you will certainly not like to hear that arenanet messed up with female animations in the last patch… especially staff clipps real hard right now when moving out of combat.

This has introduced even more clipping issues when using 2handed weapons:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/2handed-wepons-clipping-characters/first#post3212381

I wonder why this hasn’t received more attention by now. Currently it is impossible to use a staff or any other 2 hand weapon without serious clipping or positioning issues when moving out of combat. See attached screenshots for details. I am using different staffs and pants and it is obvious that the issues are not limited to certain skins

Then you are obviously not using 2 handed weapons, because they clip really hard right now and do freaking rotations when jumping. See this thread for some videos on this:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/2handed-wepons-clipping-characters

When i found an ascended weapon chest it was shamans stats (Vitality, healing, condition damage) which I consider the worst stat combo in the game. It is still rotting in my bank so far. It will likely become an underwater weapon for my next char, as i am almost never underwater and when i do, the blue trident skin (shamans is blue) will at least look really good.

There seems to be a major oversight with human female character animations since the last patch. Currently they seem to be using the male animation model. If this was done to fix clipping issues it is not working, a lot of 2handed weapons are clipping really badly now. I don’t know if this happens for other races too.

How to reproduce:

1. Create a human female character
2. Start at any location
3. Walk forward. When doing this you can easily see that the arms are much wider apart from the body – it looks almost like a boxing motion.

There is also a discussion on the main forums about this:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Arenanet-why-you-changed-female-running

Morgenes.6985:

kribre.9683:

Thanks to ADAC for some interesting fights in AG borderland today.
Gotta say u guys in a choke is a deathtrap, but I guess that comes with the 40-60man warrior/guardian train ^^
….

Just fyi, even if it looks like we’re 40-60 people at our guild raids, we’re mostly about 30-40.
Only in very very rare cases we run with more than 40 people.

It always looks like that ingame and even in the video you posted, but that’s always the case, because of the long server name, pets, minis and so on. At some points, when you look at the people and not the red names you can see, that we weren’t that many.

Nevertheless you guys weren’t as much as we were and did a very good job there.

@warr/guard train: Sadly we lack in ranged classes, mostly only about 2-4 elementalists, 2-4 necros and 2-4 mesmers and alltogether 4-6 thief, ingis, rangers during our raids. Compared to the 5-8 warrs, 5-8 guards you can really call it a meeletrain. This is our typical formation and also shows, that we’re very rarely more than 40 people. (mostly about 30-36 people)

Why so serious…you should have realized by now that exaggerating your numbers has become a running gag in the forums

Elementalist in GW1 was vastly different from what it is now. Especially because GW1 had a “secondary profession” system so you could even use skills of other classes and make entirely differnent builds. Another main difference is, that eles had a lot of AoE spells while most other classes only had very few or almost no AoE spells at all and most damage was only single target.

Elementalists were not really in a good standing in PvE and PvP. In PvE they suffered from dealing almost exclusively armor-dependent damage => that means the damage was reduced by the enemies armor. In GW1 there were some classes (mesmer, necro or ritualist) that had a lot of spells that dealt armor ignoring damage. This was a big deal because GW1 had a “hard mode” setting. If you wanted big loot you had to play hard mode, which meant enemies had a higher level and much more armor. This, of course, brought Elementalists in a very bad spot compared to the other classes with armor ignoring damage.

In competitive missions (Fort Aspenwood and Jade Quarry) Elemetalists were really good, because the enemies had “normal” (i.e. not hard mode) armor levels and there were tight packed NPC groups where the AoE spells were really useful. I really liked those missions and played them very often with my ele.

In PvP (team arena, random arena, GvG) Elementalists were average. They could bring some good ranged damge, but they were easily countered as well. Especially after the dervish buffs a lot of competitive guild used triple or even quint dervishes anyway….

That being said, for a long time there were hardly any really good skills for elementalists. Almost 90% of eles used “searing flames” or “savannah heat” as elite skill (both were introduced by the nightfall expansion if i remember right), because those were the only skills that really stood out from all the others – so much about build diversity in GW1, lol.

One with Air sets the movement speed to the cap for 1,5 seconds. This means you won’t be faster out of combat than with swiftness. However, you will be much faster during combat:

Speed out of combat: 300 Units/second
Speed out of combat with swiftness: 400 Units/second
Speed in combat: 210 Units/second
Speed in combat with swiftness: 280 Units/second
Speed in combat with one with air: 400 Units/second

Depends on your wealth. Usually sigil of battle + either sigil of force (5% damage permanent) or sigil of bloodlust (10 power for each killed foe, 25 stacks max). If you like micromanagement you can use bloodlust until the stacks are full and then switch the dagger with bloodlust to another one with sigil of force.

FrownyClown.8402:

I give up on you guys. Learn to not be a whiney kitten all the time. Also gallvarn there has already been talk of keeping one at adept tier and moving a different skill.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYgE2AS4BAcAFg4hF4AcYpwMA

I’m thinking pure burst build while offering condi cleanses in fire instead of water. Full zerker or course.

Same as above. Not possible because Elemental Attument is switched to master tier, Please rework.

@Frowny, using Renewing Stamina on a build with 4% crit and no fury (because you don’t switch attunements) is more like a gap filler, or am I mistaken?

FrownyClown.8402:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArdhEmebIy4gjDIkHngJwCjHhgH0hlCzAA-jECBodBkCAgCBMTqIas1gFRjVbDTrjIq2rgIqWIAfzBA-w

Super bunker s/f. Can get 2600 toughness with Rock Barrier. Its primarily uses the auto attack in earth to apply bleeds. Prob not for solo play.

As far as i know this will not be possible. Last time i looked they wanted to switch Elemental Attunement to master. If that is still true, please rework.

Then I have some really bad news for you: They cannot be salvaged or used in the mysic forge. And this is intentional. It was changed several patches ago when the achievement chests were introduced that gave each player a large number of badges to prevent a sudden influx of materials and exotic items (note that you could have forged 4 exos into a new exotic that you could have sold on the trading post).

By the way: Forging a precursor on the mystic forge usually requires several hundred (up to thousands) of rare and exotic items (some have used 4000+ rares and got nothing but thin air).

First of all, thanks for the replies. I have played my elementalis for over 1500 hours and I am seriosly concerned about the current patch ideas because of the following:

Diamond Skin
This skill is going to be hard to balance, as somebody already stated. I guess it will range from useless to borderline OP depending on the enemy you are facing. It is also very hard to tell how this skill will fare in group compositions. I would rather prefer something like “incoming condition duration reduced by 33%” without a health threshold. That way the effect would become far more calculable, there could be some active counterplay on the condition players side and condition remove would become less of a concern for an elementalist. This would also complement geomancers freedom or rock solid really well.

The way it is planned now it will open the door to come insanely cheesy builds that only come down to getting more heal-per-second that the enemy has physical damage per second and you can simply start emotespamming your opponent. I don’t want this type of gameplay.

Renewing stamina
Please leave this on adept level, you have already given a good example yourself how this would complement a new build really well. Also players that want to play the classic D/D ele can still continue to run their old builds. The patch is designed to open new build options, not remove the old ones.

On a side note: I agree with some of the players here that as this trait procs on critical it fits the air line much better than arcana (same goes for arcane precision by the way).

Elemental Attunement
As players have already stated this is the core mechanic of arcana, or at least it feels like it. It is the one trait that makes up for the low hp and armor by providing regeneration and protection and swiftness (and one might when attuning to fire xD ). You should be very, very careful when making any changes to it. It feels so much like a core mechanic that players are even suggesting to make this an inherent action when switching attunements, and it would seem right. Keep in mind that this is also one of the core teamplay teamplay traits. I agree it is strong, but it better should be.

Cleansing wave
I seriously think that removing one condition every 10-13 seconds is not that much for a master trait. Warriors for instance, can remove more in the same time using cleansing ire alone. The same applies to cleansing water grandmaster as well.

Aquamancers alacrity
I can understand moving this up for consistency, but this will affect support eles in WvW, that usually went with this, cleansing water and cleansing wave. In addition to that, reducing cooldown abilities are not as good as for other classes because

- we have 4 attunements, so if we use all attunements equally, we get much less average cooldown reduction
- warriors for example always get an additional effect on their cooldown reducing traits, like might on critical or additional damage when opponent is stunned

One with air
1,5 seconds is barely noticable infight, +0,5 seconds to allow boon duration builds get more out of it seems reasonable. This would really make it a powerful trait for fresh air users.

Arcane precision
A rather lackluster trait for 25 points, given the low chance to proc.

Soothing wave
Does anybody actually use this trait? As you already mentioned, it’s not a viable option even at adept level. I liked the change of Buring fire (Cleansing fire when you get 3 conditions) a lot. You might consider something like “cleansing wave (Dagger water skill 5) when you drop below 50% health” or a similar effect.

Final shielding
You have well realized that this trait needs a buff, even with 60 seconds cooldown I doubt it would see much use. This might be different if renewing stamina is moved to air.

Vigorous scepter
This skill does not synergize with vigor from phoenix.

Winborne dagger
A good trait in theory, but unlike its warrior counterpart it does not work out of combat

And even staff ele users will rather say

“not nerfed too much”
“can still run old build without too many changes”

than

“useful addition to gameplay”
“new viable build options”
“staff now competitive in 1vs1”

A balance patch is only credible if it includes ele nerfs, because…nerf ele. Wasn’t there a nerf ele picture somewhere…?

Ok found it, thanks google!

Olvendred.3027:

On eles:

Massively nerfing 2 trait lines and then buffing 2 others does not encourage build diversity. If you want get more diversity, leave Water and Arcane alone, and add the buffs to Earth and Fire. This would actually give us the option to choose between different builds, rather than having to abandon all existing builds in favour of new ones. A few months after the patch, there’ll be the same lack of diversity, just with a different build.

Thats one of the my major issues with this patch. I don’t really understand why creating new builds always means that existing ones get nerfed. The current builds are not even competitive enough to make players bring elementalists to the tournaments at all. Nefing them is hardly what anyone asked for.

And the new options are just additional options. The trait points for these options must be shoved off the existing builds so the players will always be forced to choose. So there is no power creep at all, just a buff to traits/builds that were never on par to begin with. And if the new traits allow for strong new builds with the old traits being the same – isn’t that what you have been trying to achieve in the first place?

alanis.6094:

Adiemus.2081:

Think about it, to make a trait line less dependable is to make vital trait more accessible with less point invested. How can they get this right with mesmer by moving illusion celerity down to 15 but totally messed up the elementalist by moving up Water V and Arcana V and VI?

I don’t get Anet’s logic.

Its not rocket science — those three traits were very, very, very strong (i.e. OP) for Adept level traits. (much, much stronger than IC)

That might be true. However both traits are NEEDED on an Elementalist unless you hide behind a sizeable group of other players with a staff. A-Net cannot send a class with lowest hp and armor into melee (with S/D, D/D or D/F) and expect them to survive when they dont have a really good survival mechanic (and I mean, something else than utilities on a 75-90 second timer). Vigor from renewing stamina and elemental attunement was providing that additional help that melee elementalists need so much.

FrownyClown.8402:

Columbo.5924:

@FrownyClown

More condition damage is hardly what the elementalist needed, other classes can apply (spam) conditions way better than we can, no need to try and make the elementalist a lackluster condition class as well. The fact that others can do it better is good – I like diversity between classes.

Elementalist can hardly apply more than one condition in one attunement and that is easily cleared out using your opponents condition removal (we don’t really have cover conditions or something like that). Also keep in mind that real condition classes can stack damaging conditions much faster and more reliable.

And the fact that the old grandmaster toughness to condition damage trait is now a master trait does not change much. I think it is a way better idea to get the stats you can get from gear from the gear (like condition damage) and the things you can not/hardly get from gear (like vigor, condition remove) from traits.

Condi is very viable as d/d. Go look at my youtube vids.

Okay then, but the problem is rather that they don’t want to give us this buff (I, for one, would not even take this trait because i think condition damage is not good on an ele) without nerfing stuff. Avoid power creep they said, it will be fun they said…

And if I had to make a choice whether I would take all of the thing in the previewed patch notes or no changes at all, I would rather not take any change at all, and leave the ele where it is.

The designers just dont get that “we dont want to be forced into water and arcana so much” does NOT, I repeat NOT mean destroy the arcana and water line so much, so that nobody uses them anymore. All this comes basically without a meaningful replacement – except for some gimmick options/traits that will be nerfed one patch later – of course without restoring the other traits that were nerfed because of the gimmick.

Do they even remember that players can NOT get all the traits at once? Buffing certain traits would lead to a power creep if we had 30-30-30-30-30 builds, but currently you always have to give up something in order to gain a certain trait. For example getting the new fire auto-cleasing fire trait means that you need to shove off those points for fire attunement from somewehere else, where they are needed just as much. That already takes care of the “power creep”.

@FrownyClown

More condition damage is hardly what the elementalist needed, other classes can apply (spam) conditions way better than we can, no need to try and make the elementalist a lackluster condition class as well. The fact that others can do it better is good – I like diversity between classes.

Elementalist can hardly apply more than one condition in one attunement and that is easily cleared out using your opponents condition removal (we don’t really have cover conditions or something like that). Also keep in mind that real condition classes can stack damaging conditions much faster and more reliable.

And the fact that the old grandmaster toughness to condition damage trait is now a master trait does not change much. I think it is a way better idea to get the stats you can get from gear from the gear (like condition damage) and the things you can not/hardly get from gear (like vigor, condition remove) from traits.

Moving Water 5 to Master
Moving Arcane 5 AND 6 to Master

is just plain wrong and an unwarranted nerf that nobody was asking for. They dont want “power creep”. Yeah nerfing elementalists is definitely making sure that won’t happen.

The idea behind diamond skin is just plain wrong as well. Any kind of “immunity” is something that does not add to the gameplay in any sensible way and does not belong into a competitive game at all.

Why does gaining new build options always include ruining the old ones? I just dont get it. With the new patch a lot of players (like me) will be forced into arcane and water even more than before, because we need the former adept traits. Its also the death to any boon duration build, because the key focus of that build was elemental attunement. And as my previous posters already stated, this now rivals with renewing stamina.

If they want us play fullzerker with conjured weapons only (so you dont have to worry about those pesky attunement switches anymore…), they should simply remove the other weapon options.

Did they even play what they have been designing?!?

I would really like to thank the devs for posting their ideas beforehand, this is very appreciated. Thank you ! Seriously – thank you !

If you read the opinion about the elementalist changes you might notice that some posts are getting increasingly toxic. I have played my elementalist for more than 1500 hours and I can really understand them. You have moved far too many traits into master tier, which will force players to go 20 water 20 arcane even more than before We did take these traits because they are needed – they still are, but now we can only get one or even none, which is simply a nerf to a class that has already enough trouble finding a spot in a group composition.

Even staff users will rather agree that they have not been nerfed too much, instead of saying they stayed the same or say they have even been buffed. D/D or S/D setups were nerfed the hardest without even adressing some of the core elementalist issues (focus being useless, same applies to lingering attunements, arcane precision, one with air, any +damage trait except for PvE MinMaxers with very specialized group setups… too many issues to list).

Simply put: I would rather keep the old state of the elementalist without any change at all, than take the changes posted in the preview.

Bsgapollo.5364:

• Water V – Cleansing Wave: It’s one of the very few condition removals an elementalist has. And for it to be effective he still has to put a lot of points into arcana for it to be good. Even after the buff to the elemental cooldown it would mean you can only remove 1 condition every 13 seconds. Which is not extremly great for a master tier trait.

• Arcane V – Elemental Attunement and Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina: Yes 1 should be moved to a master tier but not both, each one of those traits are almost an essence to have on an elementalist. My suggestion would be to put Arcane VI into the master trait, that way elementalists still have the choice to pick between a slightly less effective endurance regen traits such as Arcane VII ( vigorous scepter ) if they would only put 10 points into arcana.

• Earth VII: I would honestly put this into the adept trait tier. Elementalist has very little ways to deal condition damage, for it to work they have to stack into toughness for it to be effective, meaning they would lack a lot into vitality and other departments. There are a lot of better traits to take into earth and personaly I would never take that trait, not even if it was in the adept trait line.

Pretty much everything this man said. Then again, everyone agrees that eles need a buff or more build diversity. How is destroying the current working builds going to help?!? If the changes are released the way they were published it is a flat out nerf to elementalists, how is that supposed to bring eles back to competitive level?

I would like to add that i don’t like the change to Diamond Skin. Making condition remove less mandatory by making a class immune to conditions is a very, very bad idea. In my opinion having any sort of invincibility against entire builds or playstyles does not add to the gameplay in any way.

Edit: In addition to that, this will force players to invest MORE points into arcana and water to get actually even less than they had before. And the changes to the other traitlines are not going to give elementalists enough damage or other support to compensate for the changes (excluding the dimand skin change which should never, ever released to the public because its either completely OP or completely meaningless, depending on your enemy)

Edit: Removed my old post completely as it was not helping and just feeding the troll.

I just wonder if we can see our new star on the troll sky as well during the next week against Millers Sound and Far Shiverpeaks. Both servers have very sizeable and skilled guilds and also a much larger WvW population.

What server are you playing on? This is the schedule for next week:

Miller’s Sound [DE] – Far Shiverpeaks – Abaddon’s Mouth [DE]
Underworld – Desolation – Aurora Glade
Gandara – Gunnar’s Hold – Fort Ranik [FR]

Underworld against our favorite ex T1 Gold league sandbagging champion Desolation. This is likely going to be even more uneven.

If you are looking for a reduction in condition duration i would still favor Melandru runes, especially in WvW and PvP with all those hammer warriors around (because Melandru also reduces stun duration). And in PvE damage is king, so will likely either use scholar/divinity runes or ruby orbs.

The secondary focus of this rune set is condition damage and elementalists are very poor condition appliers. So this rune set holds no appeal for elementalists in my opinion.

Fast Asleep.8475:

Gotta to give great thx to Anet for their hotfix. Like 90% less population on the map afterwards. Well done!

how do they say?
never play
on patch day!

/enters trollmobile and drives off

Karolis.4261:

Goes for Gunars Hold. Thx for whoever reported me bashing about Anet’s choices made to make www as it is now. Blobby, laggy and unplayable for anyone but keyboard mashing zerglets. Got banned only for 72 h, but be sure ( with your help) I will try my best to make it a perma ban next time.

I’m sorry to hear that. Though I don’t know what your exact words were, I can imagine that somebody was really trying hard to get as much out of this rather broken matchup as possible and the last thing he/she wanted to read was another rant on the public chat. I guess everyone here will agree that the patch showed the good and the bad things about the current state of WvW in GW2.

I know it is hard not to get worked up with the current matchup. There is a very large disparity in population, that is even increased by national holidays (this week a lot of Germans are on vacation/holidays – including our most important raid leaders).

I guess we can both agree that underworld has a lot of rebuilding to do, but the low numbers suprised me a lot. Even with guilds leaving I expected it to be still full, but more a loosely orgnized PuG group flocking around (or multiple groups for that matter). At least that is what its like on Abaddon when no commander is around. When I hit LFG for a dungeon it’s like a 50% chance its either filled with desolation or underworld players, so I don’t thing you are lacking in numbers of players on your server. This is a bit strange.

Kudos to all the players on both Underworld and Gunnar’s Hold that have not given up !

The main problems are

- The low damage
- The high reuse
- The very small size of the wall, making it very hard to properly use blast finishers on the wall (it is so small, there were even bug reports where players thought that blast finishers didn’t work on flamewall)

so it’s basically everything about this skill that needs rework

Very much the same happened to Flare [FIRE] (currently on Aurora Glade, and I suppose at least the underworld guys know where they came from … ). They disbanded because of the infamous bloodlust patch. They are now back in action.

Everyone just needs a break from time to time. If they enjoyed the game they will come back pretty soon i think, bursting blobs and hunting guys like me. A leopard cannot change its spots

First of all: Thanks for the really decent responses from GH and UW, This is very appreciated. Thumbs up!

Also thanks for the roamers on both servers, going solo has rarely been so much fun than this week, because you actually run into others running solo. Servers like Gandara usually have small groups and rarely ever solo players. And even 1v2 against good (!) players is usually not going in your favor.

And also thanks for the screenshots. I am always interested how our server looks from the other side. For one, I cannot see the ranks of the other guys on my server. For example every time somebody says that our blob does not lift its weight and posts a video about it, i can see how many “invader” and “assaulter” were is that blob at that point.

Edited my original post here (was quite misleading, noticed that after Nauda’s response): You might notice the guy with the “Gold soldier” rank at the front of the blob (Just look at the bottommost red names). Gold invader is rank 1770+. That is a freaking second job (i am rank 350+, and i think I play way too much already).