Guild Wars 2

So far as math is concerned, these ‘buffs’ are barely buffs and come with a heaping side of “Lets make Lingering Curse not worth taking for scepter DPS” even though its commonly accepted as one of the worst condition weapons in the game even with its signature trait.

Current Scepter Auto
Sans Lingering Curse
(((0.06*1200)22)5)(((0.06*1200)22)5)(((0.06*1200)+ 33.5)4)
470+470+422
1362 damage

With Linger Curse at 100%
(((0.06*1200)22)10)(((0.06*1200)22)10)(((0.06*1200)+ 33.5)8)
940+940+844
2724 damage

New Scepter Auto
Sans Lingering Curse
(((0.06*1200)22)4.5)(((0.06*1200)22)4.5)(((0.06*1200)22)4.5)(((0.06*1200)+ 33.5)6)
423+423+423+633
1902 damage

With Lingering Curse at 50%
(((0.06*1200)22)6.75)(((0.06*1200)22)6.75)(((0.06*1200)22)6.75)(((0.06*1200)+ 33.5)9)
634.5+634.5+634.5+949.5
2853 damage

These changes:
A) Make it so the Lingering Curse trait has almost ZERO EFFECT on your auto-attack as compared to what it does now. At 1200 condition damage it is a buff of a mere 129 damage per auto attack chain, note not 129 per attack, but per the entire chain of attacks_carried out over 2.4 seconds. Netting us a roughly 40 damage per second. Woohoo…
B) Scepter is significantly more powerful (50% of original DPS added on to the new untraited) than it currently is WITHOUT Lingering Curses, discouraging traiting for the scepter.

But wait, there’s more!
Our second skill also applies conditions. How is it affected, well let’s see.
Current Grasping Dead
Sans Lingering Curse
(((0.06*1200)22)7)(((0.06*1200)22)7)(((0.06*1200)22)7)
658658+658
1974

With Lingering Curse at 100%
(((0.06*1200)22)14)(((0.06*1200)22)14)(((0.06*1200)22)14)
13161316+1316
3948

New Grasping Dead
Sans Lingering Curse
(((0.06*1200)22)7)(((0.06*1200)22)7)(((0.06*1200)+22)7)
1974

With Lingering Curse at 50%
(((0.06*1200)22)10.5)(((0.06*1200)22)10.5)(((0.06*1200)22)10.5)
987987+987
2961

Oh look, we lost A THOUSAND DAMAGE and 2.5 seconds of cripple. Assuming you use TS at its maximum uptime that means these ‘buffs’ have now cost us a net of 60 damage per second!

But what about the new skills? Torment! APPLY ALL THE TORMENT! Lets assume that Feast of Corruption keeps its ten second CD, the scepter is already significantly buffed for non FoC users so anything this skill gives is just gravy. But for FoC users what would it have to be to be for lingering curses to be worth taking at 50% effectiveness, since it is now the ONLY potential saving grace of this ill conceived fiasco.

We know the amount of torment it applies is going to be seven (giving the benefit of the doubt that you will always have five or more conditions before you light FoC up, haha, yeah right… but anyway) and torment deals ((0.045*CD)+15.9) per stack, doubled while moving, might as well give them that ‘benefit of the doubt’ as well. So assuming ridiculously ideal conditions are filled, depending on the duration they give the seven stacks of torment, with Lingering Curses the skill will deal:

1 second : 1467 total damage : 146 damage per second
2 seconds : 2935 total damage : 293 damage per second
3 seconds : 3914 total damage : 391 damage per second
4 seconds : 4890 total damage : 489 damage per second
5 seconds : 5871 total damage : 587 damage per second
6 seconds : 6850 total damage : 685 damage per second
7 seconds : 7828 total damage : 782 damage per second
8 seconds : 8807 total damage : 880 damage per second
9 seconds: 9786 total damage : 978 damage per second
10 seconds: 14760 total damage : 1476 damage per second

So at what point of scaling does Lingering Curses, our only trait that directly affects the scepter, worth taking for its effect over a single skill? How much DPS? Because whatever it is, it is in reality all we are getting out of these supposed ‘scepter buffs’ so it better be pretty freakin’ impressive.

EDIT: Shutting off auto formatting so it’ll stop screwing with my formulas.
EDIT: Whoops, forgot to add lingering curses 50% duration increase on the final chart.

DevilLordLaser.8619:

The cycles of the moon and stars is a common theme in druidic or other natural systems of magic. Lunar/celestial effects show up all the time. C’mon, man. Chillax. Could be worse – they could’ve been shapeshifters. That would’ve been a real disaster.

A) We already have lore for druids and they are based on the living portion of nature like plants and animals.

B) Even if their aim was to make druid more celestial themed, a broader spectrum of nature than just the biology of a single world, they still totally botched that. Firstly because there are several items thrown in which are obviously hang-ons (vine grasp, healing seeds) from earlier renditions of a more traditional druid. As well as hang ons from the base class that make no sense with the cosmic druid theme, like the pet. Seriously why on earth would someone apparently concerned with and drawing from something so broad as THE COSMOS have an dinky little animal companion? And finally, because even the portions of the druid which do manage to have a cohesive cosmic theme, are distracting away from any serious nature theme more than adding to it. This theme they’ve created looks more based on some hookah puffing space-wizard you’d find airbrushed on to the side of some losers van than some great druidic being concerned with life on a universal scale.

C) Ignoring ALL existing lore on druids. If druids were so cosmically minded, wouldn’t they be on the dragon’s side? The dragons are a force of nature as old as creation, the cycle they create by devouring the world is as natural a part of the nature of cosmos as floods and droughts and birth and death are a part of the nature of any natural environment.

If they want to give druids a theme unique to GW2, fine, could be great, druids don’t have to be biology themed (as stated earlier, so long as you ignore all existing lore on them, which let’s be honest, ANet has done before). But if they’re going to do that, actually do it, pick a theme and stick with and don’t half- kitten it so you can shoehorn thematically unfitting content from previous renditions of the specialization and the base class to save on work time.

EDIT: And yes, as some people have pointed out, if you want to get particular Druids were originally primitive scholars and medicine men from the british isles more worshipful of death than nature. In fact the majority of the things we now associate with necromancy are actually taken from the practitions of pagan druidism, while necromancy was just a word for a seance of the dead. So its not like druids transforming in to animals and controlling plants is a hard and fast rule like Warriors using weapons or Mages practicing magic, as the most common theme for them (nature) isn’t even based in their real world practices.

I despise the trinity, its has less strategy and depth than a game of tic-tac-toe. That being said, I’m perfectly okay with the druid being a healer, just because healing and tanking are options does not mean they will be required in all content, in fact I doubt even any really since ANet hates rigid group restrictions that stop you from getting to content. I don’t know if I’ll play it, but I’ll at least try it whenever I pick up the expansion, if its fun I will if it isn’t I won’t, and just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean it should be removed or that its a failure. Specializations are a content pipeline, meaning these are the first to come, if you don’t like this one you’ll undoubtedly like something coming after it.

That said, I’m not happy with the druid… what on earth were they trying to do here? This… thing, is a convoluted mess, completely thematically nonsensical.

A druid is a space wizard, with an animal pet? Oh and a few random nonsensical nature skills thrown in and a LAAAAAAAAAASER from out of kittening nowhere!? And then more spells that really don’t have anything to do with nature or space yet proc off which one you are currently attuned to…? Cheezus and crackers that’s even complicated to say let alone explain, design, and I can’t imagine how it will be to play.

How far off the reservation did the designer wander while working on this? Is it no ones job at ANet to supervise these guys and make sure what they aren’t designing the specializations to come out looking like a pink floyd CD cover? This specialization’s theme is one of the biggest cases of complexity addiction I’ve ever seen, its just plain ridiculous.

I’m just going to go and say what everyone once knew and even now is completely obvious concerning the scepter.

The REAL problem is not any one condition weapon but that the condition damage system still needs some more revamps, and prior to the removal of condition limits, the scepter was a decent PvE condition weapon, so far as condition weapons went back then. The real problem is that burning is ridiculously overpowered and every other condition is incredibly weak. Even conditions with a secondary effect like poison, confusion, and torment are just pithy little additions to any build that you are barely concerned with maintaining compared to burning, but particularly bleeding, which is just burning at 1/3rd the efficacy with no additional effect differentiating it from burning.

I see two fixes for it:

• A – Just nerf and buff until its more even with how many of each stack are applied.
  • Nerf burning down to (0.13*CD) + (1.25*lvl) + 7.5
  • Buff bleeding up to (0.09*CD) + (1*lvl) + 2.5
  • Buff Amplified wrath up to 20% to compensate guardians (5% buff)

For those that don’t want to do the math, that’s about a 50% buff on bleeding and about a 20% nerf on burning. And on a per-stack basis burning will maintain about a 1/3rd damage advantage over bleeding as opposed to the current 2/3rds advantage. However with how bleeding is applied in more stacks than burning, they should be about equal with bleeding overtaking burning at maximum stacks. Confusion, torment, and poison also need slight buffs, particularly torment and poison, but I’m not doing the math for those.

• B – Add an effect to bleeding so that it has something over burning
  • Nerf burning down to (0.13*CD) + (1.25*lvl) + 7.5 (same as above)
  • Bleeding retains current scaling but gains one of two new skill effects, not sure which one players would like more.
    • Bleeding deals an additional (0.1*CD) damage per second for each 4500 health an opponent has (counts current health, so damage goes down over time)
    • Bleeding removes 15% of your maximum health (does not deal damage, only prevents healing and operates the same way as poison, one stack fills the effect)

The burning effect is the same, except with no direct buffs to bleeding. The effects are meant too turn bleeding in to the anti-bunkering condition, something PvP desperately needs and something which would be useful in WvW and PvE. Obviously the first rendition would be capped at a certain damage bonus against champions, bosses, and WvW Lords.

Shadowflare.2759:

However, most OTHER elementalist builds are far less flexible and don’t come anywhere close to the OP meta build. It just so happens that the meta build is easy to play and therefore is seen far more often in SPVP.

What other builds? While yes, they are overpowered, the skills and traits that make up the arcane/water bunker build are also the only set of skills which actually work with the attunement class mechanic and do something about ther zero baseline survivability we are stuck with, same way its been for three freaking years.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Earth Shield will never be usable as long as it has a casttime.

I’d totally use it over armor of earth or arcane shield if it was instant and a stunbreak.

Such a little change could bring so much build diversity, but Arenanet don’t care…

Supposedly sometime in the next two days the developers are going to be going over their balance plans for the classes when the expansion comes. I am hoping beyond hope that they are going to reveal SOME kind of plan that will do something about how there is one rote-memorized method for playing this class, and half our utilities and MORE than half our traits completely defy and even work against that single playstyle.

As for me, love earth shield, its tons of fun, that said it is almost always useless. I’ve tried using it in PvP, and its very rarely even worth using let alone slotting. I can think of one time where I 1v3d on mid for five minutes, not even exaggerating, but it was against three idiots that just spammed ranged attacks at me from the exact same spot while I ran circles around the mid point, they literally didn’t even move, it was almost like they were afk’d at a world boss. But other than that one moment of glory, hardly ever even managed to do anything with it.

MadRabbit.3179:

Conncept.7638:

The problem with this suggestion is that the whole idea behind the tempest is being the opposite of arcane, something which rewards you for swapping less and dedicating yourself to fewer elements. And its a design goal that no small amount of the community wishes for, people have begged for less attunment-centric and more elementally themed builds since launch and ANet hasn’t accommodated such requests to any degree until the tempest.

The problem with THAT however is that we have one single trait in the entire base class that supports dedication to fewer elements and attuning less often that actually holds any value in any game mode, Pyromancer’s Puissance.

Honestly I HOPE, but doubt, that they reason for this is that we’re due for major trait changes which will reward and support less swapping.

And I wish they would just tell us whether they are going to make such changes are not, because if they are, we need to withhold judgement on the tempest until those changes are made, because any feedback prior to those changes isn’t really of any valuable. And if they aren’t going to make any such changes, then a massive amount of the elementalist community needs to find another class to play, as ANet is apparently never going to support how they would like to play this one.

I can see in your viewpoint it being a problem, but for me, it’s not. It’s actually the point of my suggestion. I am not in that group that wants game mechanics that support less attunement swapping.

I find it to be counter-productive. We have no extra class ability like stealing or adrenaline, because we have the attunements and access to 20 different weapon abilities.

Mechanics that lock us into using one or two attunements pretty much makes us a weapon swap class with no extra class ability.

So I don’t want it to be this way. You and everyone else can disagree, but I would like to see an overload skill that encourages us to stay in an attunement longer for potential benefits, but doesn’t prevent us from attunement dancing.

Like the buff idea I have above. Another one I mentioned in a thread is the overload mechanic slowly charges up a storm based on the attunement you are in, growing in power the longer you stay in the attunement and then releasing around the elementalist when he swaps attunements. Imagine that: a tempest making storms. That would also bring a new element to the class. The tempest trait line can focus on providing offensive benefits to swapping attunements like arcane provides support benefits for swapping attunements.

But, of course, just my two cents. I absolutely love attunement dancing so my personal feedback is I want to see it encouraged.

Well its not like its a contest between the two. There’s no reason whatsoever that supporting swap-light builds has to hurt swap-heavy builds in any way, shape, or form. I myself have designed two trait revamps that would add swap-less builds without even affecting a single trait of the swap-heavy builds, including the arcane/water bunker build that everyone is so defensive about these days.

And I see what you’re saying about our class mechanics, but class mechanics are relative to build for any other class, no class is dependent on them, they’re just always available. And not even always available in one case, engineers basically don’t have a class mechanic, just a set of five abilities to cover that they don’t get a second weapon. People play necro builds that never use shroud, ranger builds that totally ignore their pet (let it die for all I care, going to happen anyway…) , guardian builds that never activate their virtues, thief builds that never steal, mesmer builds that never shatter, the list goes on and on. No reason elementalists can’t have the same build diversity with their class mechanic.

And that’s the key problem with making the class swap-only, what about build diversity?

Maximum swapping lends itself to one dominant build, always has and always will unless they make just as big of changes to the base class as would be needed for less swap-centric builds. Basically they would have to overload the class with choices that affect swapping so that builds would become about how you swap, rather than how much, and doing so would also totally nullify the swap cooldown mechanic found in the arcane tree.

So honestly, either way the developers go, the elementalist needs a lot of work so far as build diversity goes. But the difference is, swap builds are already supported, they’re not going away and thanks to specializations, they can be added to ad infinitum without any change to the base class. Swap light builds on the other hand, pretty much don’t exist, and won’t without changes to the base class, changes which would in no way harm current or future swap heavy builds.

The problem with this suggestion is that the whole idea behind the tempest is being the opposite of arcane, something which rewards you for swapping less and dedicating yourself to fewer elements. And its a design goal that no small amount of the community wishes for, people have begged for less attunment-centric and more elementally themed builds since launch and ANet hasn’t accommodated such requests to any degree until the tempest.

The problem with THAT however is that we have one single trait in the entire base class that supports dedication to fewer elements and attuning less often that actually holds any value in any game mode, Pyromancer’s Puissance.

Honestly I HOPE, but doubt, that they reason for this is that we’re due for major trait changes which will reward and support less swapping.

And I wish they would just tell us whether they are going to make such changes are not, because if they are, we need to withhold judgement on the tempest until those changes are made, because any feedback prior to those changes isn’t really of any value. And if they aren’t going to make any such changes, then a massive amount of the elementalist community needs to find another class to play, as ANet is apparently never going to support how they would like to play this one.

Carighan.6758:

Wasn’t there a way to turn all this annoying extra sound stuff off?

Your choices are shutting off environmental sounds, music, player made music, effects, the UI, or all sound. None of those affect minis except the ‘all’ option, so literally the only way to deal with this crap is to put the entire game on mute.

lorddarkflare.9186:

Conncept.7638:

If you check the red tracker right now, there is a thread up addressing the return of the thief’s Ricochet, in which a developer states that because of the fewer number of traits in the redesigned specialization system, it was decided that each weapon (and presumably kit) would only have one dedicated trait.

I kind of agree and it makes sense, but at the same time, that doesn’t excuse removal of the playstyle, they could have revamped any number of traits to fulfill a similar manic in-your-face style of sustain and support without being exclusive to the bomb kit, and they didn’t.

They tried to. Soothing Detonations, Heal Resolnator and Bunker Down are supposed to do just that.

Bunker Down ended up finding a different niche and Soothing Detonations/Medical Dispersion Field are bad.

The best bet right now is to replace Soothing Detonations and rejigger Medical Dispersion Field.

Bunker down was never meant to be supportive, it was meant to be, as the name suggests, about bunkering, zero-investment sustain that rewards outlasting opponents, not unlike healing signet. If it was meant to be supportive sustain, there wouldn’t be a critical hit requirement, because there is no circumstances under which investment in those two stats simultaenously would be worth the one single thing in the game that heals based on critical chance.

And for the record, it is my opinion that such childish “Wah wah I shouldn’t have to build defense” traits and skills shouldn’t even exist. They’re horrible design that reward stupid cheesy play, punish intelligent play, and negatively impact the game in pretty much every way possible whenever and wherever they are found.

As for the other two, I don’t know, maybe that was their intention? But when I think about our blast finishers, they’re all utility and control based save BoB, and even BoB is still control, just on top of craptons of damage scaling. That completely defies the ‘manic’ and in-your-face playstyle that people loved so much about the old EiF builds. The constant stream of skills while dancing around your addled opponent. If that was their intention with those two traits, that’s only more evidence they removed EiF without even ever giving it a chance.

If you check the red tracker right now, there is a thread up addressing the return of the thief’s Ricochet, in which a developer states that because of the fewer number of traits in the redesigned specialization system, it was decided that each weapon (and presumably kit) would only have one dedicated trait.

I kind of agree and it makes sense, but at the same time, that doesn’t excuse removal of the playstyle, they could have revamped any number of traits to fulfill a similar manic in-your-face style of sustain and support without being exclusive to the bomb kit, and they didn’t.

MadRabbit.3179:

Conncept.7638:

Well if any of your post concerning other classes was true, I guess we should all move to another game, but since none of it is, we shan’t.

I have five builds that work just fine on my guard, three condi and two power and I use zeal more than any other trait line actually.

Don’t play my warrior much, but I have a tanky power build and a glass cannon build, as well as a condition build, but the warrior condition builds just aren’t very fun in my opinion.

Engineer, three builds, never use firearms for anything.

I’ve lost count of how many builds, not to mention my best soloing builds, slow but pretty much an unstoppable force.

Mesmer, you’re kidding, right? After that redesign, they have one ridiculously powerful build but the probably the greate amount of viable build paths that any class has ever had.

Ranger, five builds, two condition, three power, work for everything. Admitedly have a pet (more commonly known as a ‘walking downed state’) still stuck, but your builds do not have to (nor ever should) be overly reliant on your pet staying alive.

Thief, admittedly a little broken, but mainly because of class mechanics, similar to us. How many build options can you have, when you have no supportive abilities, and no reason to build defense? One, glass cannon, and that’s it. The difference is, thieves at least have a couple ways of building glass cannon, we have one way of building jack-of-all-trades sustainomatic swap-it-all robomancer.

Are all of my builds competitively viable? No, but they all work, and even that sad and pathetic minimum of functionality isn’t true of the majority of elementalist content.

While I am thrilled that you have come up with your own builds, the comparison done above was done within the context of what is listed on Metabattle, since it’s pretty much the only non-bias source of what the current meta is I have available. Within that context, all of it is true. You are more than welcome to disagree with what is available on Metabattle, but that’s not my concern.

The difference is, your claim the class isn’t broken because of what metabattle says is as much evidence that the elementalist isn’t broken as Alice in Wonderland is evidence of fifth dimensional theory. Because, apparently, you don’t know what broken means, let me educate you.

These builds mentioned above, work, they function, they actually do what they are supposed to do when used in game, and that alone makes them usable, regardless of how they contribute to a win. Winning, as your parents probably told you at some point during you childhood, isn’t, everything. Broken, as you put it, means unusable, unable to fulfill its intended functionality, a state which very little content from any other class can be classified under. Broken, in this context, would mean that they either do not meet their purpose among the class’ repertoire of skills, or that they do not fulfill their function against the content they are meant to be pitted against.

Lets look at how the attunement system, basically our class in a nutshell, and how it works with the remainder of the class content.
- 30 conjure skills and a conjure trait that literally work against the class mechanic
- 12 autoattack skills rendered worthless
- 15 traits that only work from not swapping
- Channeled skills are better for cancelling than actually using to their full potential
- A new class mechanic that works based on not swapping
- Glass cannon-like defense levels regardless of build without a select group of five or so traits.

Yeah, we’re broken, anyone who says otherwise, is either blind, or a developer trying to sell us the class and upcoming specializations.

Well if any of your post concerning other classes was true, I guess we should all move to another game, but since none of it is, we shan’t.

I have five builds that work just fine on my guard, three condi and two power and I use zeal more than any other trait line actually.

Don’t play my warrior much, but I have a tanky power build and a glass cannon build, as well as a condition build, but the warrior condition builds just aren’t very fun in my opinion.

Engineer, three builds, never use firearms for anything.

I’ve lost count of how many builds on my Necro, second most played character after my elementalist, which is slowly becoming my least played. Not to mention my best soloing builds, slow but pretty much an unstoppable force.

Mesmer, you’re kidding, right? After that redesign, they have one ridiculously powerful build that needs to be reigned in, but other than that probably the great amount of viable build paths its had since launch.

Ranger, five builds, two condition, three power, work for everything. Admitedly have a pet (more commonly known as a ‘walking downed state’) still sucks, but your builds do not have to (nor ever should) be overly reliant on your pet staying alive.

Thief, admittedly a little broken, but mainly because of class mechanics, similar to us. How many build options can you have, when you have no supportive abilities, and no reason to build defensive stats? One, glass cannon, and that’s it. The difference is, thieves at least have a couple ways of building glass cannon, not many, but at least some, we have one way of building jack-of-all-trades sustainomatic swap-it-all robomancer.

Are all of my builds competitively viable? No, but they all work, they get me through every dungeon and all the open world content exactly the way I expect them to, and even that sad and pathetic minimum of functionality isn’t true of the majority of elementalist content

It isn’t about the trait the trait trees, your claim is a deflection from the real issue made in total ignorance of that fact. You can have the exact same trait selections and two completely different playstyles from your armor, weapon, and utility choices. Several of my builds differ greatly from each other for only one or two choices in utilities, armor, or even traits.

The problem is about actual play, your active use of the class in content, how one set use of skills in rote memorized rotation is the only playstyle the majority of your build choices support. And if you try to defy that, your builds flat out do not function, your traits do not proc, building high defense doesn’t make you feel tougher, build high damage doesn’t make you feel stronger, having a theme towards use of certain abilities just feels like enforcing a handicap upon yourself.

Stark.1350:

Ele’s have never had, nor ever will have, anything to complain about.

You are either an overly competitive player and measure worth only by power, or do not have a single minute of playtime on the Ele.

You ever heard the expression “Winning isn’t everything”? Having the most powerful build in the game doesn’t mean much when its been your ONLY competitively viable build for three years.

And pardon me? Never? Your experience with the ele is showing again. We suffered through the better part of a year after the Cleric DD bunker build was gutted with zero competitive builds, unless you count the introduction of the joke of a build that is fresh air, or standing in the back of the WvW zerg with a staff.

And you know what our biggest justification for complaint is? That it’s all going to happen again, and again, and again. We will always have one build, we will always either be overpowered and on the chopping block, or underpowered and forgotten, because the developers refuse to admit their design goals concerning the attunement system were flawed from the start. We are stuck in a never ending cycle of nerfs and buffs because the developers seemingly refuse to admit there is even a problem, let alone are willing or working on any way to address it.

Axialbloom.8109:

I hate that trait. Locks you into fire, when I want to be in water for conjures. It needs to be made baseline.

I don’t agree on making it baseline, and in my opinion both conjures and glyphs need big changes far beyond traits and buffs/nerfs, but putting their associated traits in trees that actually make sense would be a great start.

Glyphs support, defend, and apply conditions, and they’re in air, the glass cannon tree. What? They would fit better anywhere else in all our other trait trees, Air is literally the only tree that has no thematic or gameplay tie in to glyphs.

Conjures are all over the place in their individual uses, but as a group are supportive, because of the dropped environmental weapon they create, and they’re in the DPS and damage amp tree… because that makes tons of sense. But in reality, all that’s a moot point since conjures will never be valuable in most gameplay until their mechanics are somehow tied in to the attunement system, or until they are ridiculously God Mode overpowered. Without some kind of method for use alongside attunements they are never going to be anything but overpowered or worthless, because the power they would have to have to justify losing 3/5ths of your skills is just insane. I mean look at icebow, the only commonly used conjure, has an ult-level CC and one of the highest and most consistent damaging AoEs in the game, and its support themed.

Give Earthen Proxy a bleed on critical factor while in earth. Earth is NOT only about survivability, it shares that theme with Water, it is also about attrition damage through bleeding and doesn’t show it nearly enough in the base class, so little in fact that it is probably the element LEAST able to stand on its own.

As for the overall changes, none of this addresses how so many of the base class traits and abilities are weakened or even worthless when using the tempest overload mechanic.

None of it also addresses the even larger issues with the vanilla elementalist, that no individual or pair of elements can stand on their own no matter how much you invest in to them, or that cantrips and on-swap traits are our only method for gaining any reasonable amount of defense.

We need to know what you are planning to do with the base class, if anything, because otherwise how are we supposed to know what feedback to give about the tempest?

I somehow got forty five, what I missed was two events with dailies, which should have been sixty, unless the dailies didn’t count, in which case it should have been 20. And the five makes no sense in either case.

The moderators are merging without reading again, prepare yourselves for the completely nonsensical mono-thread of confusion and broken conversations.

Mods… you just merged a thread speculating WHAT the spec would be, HOURS before it was revealed, with one discussing WHAT was revealed AFTER the fact.

Can we start reading threads before taking moderator action please? Especially since I know you can’t unmerge the threads because I’ve had this conversation with you guys the last FIVE THOUSAND times you’ve done this!

1. Dodge revamp
The dodge system hinders this game like few mechanics I have ever seen in any game prior to GW2. It is a metagame within GW2 which nullifies and makes bland an insane amount of the actual GW2 content. Imagine if MTG’s Counterspell card was colorless and available in EVERY set release. Every single player would be forced to put it in their deck just to compete with every other deck having it. Dodge is counterspell, its a metagame within the game that the entire remainder of the games content has no ability to effect, only the ability to deal with by using it in kind.

The LAST thing I’m saying that dodge should go, the idea of active defense is core to GW2, but it needs heavy changes, specifically, it needs to be affected by the build and customization system that affects the remainder of the game content, being weaker when you don’t build for it and stronger when you do.

2. Specializations and Class mechanics revamp
Specializations look interesting and fun (for the most part) but Anets principal reason behind them is to start a fulfilling content pipeline, so that they spend less time trying to figure out how to add content and more time actually making and adding it.

Except that specializations totally defy that idea. For one, specializations are not going to work with each other, only with the base class, meaning that every addition is just going to be another +1 to the class that ignores every previous +1. Want a double pistol toting elementalist? Too bad, the main and off hand pistols are in two different specializations. Want an immovable tank necromancer? Too bad, all the advantages which prevent the base class from having stability are still there, so they can’t add such gameplay.

This is obviously for balance reasons, a great deal of control is needed over the expansion of the customization system (looking at you tournament format MTG), but this took it too far, under this system there will come a point where customization will pretty much be your specialization choice and little else. While the second reason beyond control, is that the class mechanics don’t lend themselves to the specialization system, you would get wonky nonsensical trait combinations with two specializations equipped.

There are several ways to fix both of these

• Give specializations a cost, things they take from the base class to have them, this will allow for more specialization content to mesh with each other, and will in fact give the developers greater control over the customization system, being able to pick and choose skills.
• Make ‘specialization’ about the slot, rather than an arbitrary label over the content. The third trait tree will be your specialization slot, which affects your class mechanic, so if you slot tempest there, you will get the tempest content and the tempest class mechanic. If you slot tempest elsewhere, you will still get the tempest content, but not the tempest mechanic.

3. New Loot System
It baffles me to no end how a system which has been pretty universally hated since the dawn of of pen and paper tabletop RPGs continues to be ported with barely any changes or improvements to EVERY SINGLE MODERN RPG! I remember having to suppress the urge to beat the ever-living crap out of GMs every time they pulled out a loot chart, and then suppressing that urge a asecond time when the chart gave out a spoon for slaying a dragon that was described as sitting on a mountain of treasure! (sound familiar?)
Collection systems work great in every game in which they have been used. You decide what you want at the cost of what you don’t and then you get it to some degree or other. It make a real player controlled economy where you are rewarded for paying attention but not punished for your own pursuits, and everyone gets steady progress towards their goals appropriate for their time and effort. And doing so would also actually make this games crafting system worthwhile without shoehorning massive power in to it not available anywhere else in the game.

Donari.5237:

Well, that staff is very very Engineery. Those drones look elegant. But I think the artist might have stretched things with how the helm looks on Charr.

edit: HAMMER. My bad. /blames upset tummy

Glad I’m not the only one who noticed that, did that charr seriously cut off his snout just to wear that mask?

khani.4786:

You disconnected. And they’ve acknowledged that if you DC then you won’t get rewards for that round even if you manage to do more events. It sucks and they can’t fix it for this event.

We are aware of an issue where if you disconnect during the event you will not be able to rejoin. If you experience this, you will be able to participate in the events that follow the one from which you disconnected. For instance, if you were disconnected during the Kessex Hills incursion, you’ll be able to get into the next stage when it takes place in Diessa Plateau.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Mordrem-Invasion-Update-11-September-12-30-PM/first

Have they said anywhere that support is going to reimburse these as well? Because the time frame they put on this crap is too freaking ridiculous to have this happen and not reimburse players for it.

Just completed the mordrem events in Diessa Plateau this morning, at 11 stacks, and got absolutely nothing.

Not sure if this has anything to do with it but just in case, the game DCd me to the character select screen at seven stacks, the screen was totally jacked up, that weird fractured grey you get sometimes, couldn’t see anything but my character portraits. Then I relogged in to the same character and luckily wound up on the same map, with my stacks gone, as per usual. But, like I said above, I didn’t get anything when I built my stacks up again.

They need minions to compete with each other.

A lot of people seem to forget that the dragons are NOT in fact cooperative with each other, they are competitive. They are each trying to devour as large a portion of the worlds magic as they can before they sleep again, and that includes undermining, attacking, and claiming territory from the other dragons without putting themselves in danger. Which, since presumably the dragons have a much easier time of killing each other than we have of killing them, is most safely done through minions.

mercury ranique.2170:

I also disagree with the lack of interaction. The problem is that a dev should stand for their choices. Going into the ranger forum and defending certain choices is recipe for dissaster. half of the complaints bout a class are not even justified cause they are based on people wanting to be invincable. So they have to be carefull in really interacting. But they do listen. They do share proposed changes and they do adept things based on that feedback. Just that it is not to everybody’s liking is a fact of life.

No, no in every way, shape, and form for all time and eternity. No.

I’m a second generation artist and designer. And if there’s one thing I’v learned from yearning and training to be an artist since I was in diapers, it’s that no one is perfect, everyone is improving. Everyone does bad work no matter their skill level. In fact I would even say most work is bad regardless of skill level, that’s why you’ll see 10 sketchbooks full of horrible unappealing test comps and sketches and cartoons for every single good piece of work that an artist puts out.

But all that failure doesn’t make anyone a bad artist, not overall or even for the moment. It’s as necessary a part of the process as the complete and finalized work.

What DOES make one a bad artist, or hardly even an artist at all, is when one refutes all critique on their work citing that their audience ‘just doesn’t understand’ as ANet does with SO MANY things concerning GW2’s design.

And even if that’s true, that the audience is missing something, it’s still your fault, the artists’ fault, your work should speak for itself, its should justify your decisions. But there are so many decisions concerning GW2s designs that aren’t justified within the game experience, and so many more that may be justified but aren’t made clear in the game experience, causing people to rightly question ANet and then feel indignant towards the silence they get as a response.

If they’re going to make the thing 90% aura support why don’t they just call it an Auramancer and be done with it?

The entire elementalist community.

People are getting ahead of themselves here, there are two definitions of unique in this case and ANet hasn’t stated which one they mean.

A: That specific items are only available from doing this content.
B: That specific types of items are only available from doing this content.

Option A I have no problem with and even encourage so long as it isn’t RNG based, option B I have every problem with.

I still don’t have ascended gear because I don’t like crafting and that’s the only way to get it, in spite of the fact that ANet blatantly stated when they introduced ascended gear that there would multiple means of obtaining a set. They better not repeat that same BS here. I have no problem if there are unique items tied to certain content, if I really want that specific item I’ll put in the work for it as anyone should be expected to, or if I decide I don’t like the content enough to warrant the effort, I won’t.

But if they shoehorn an ENTIRE CATEGORY of items in to one content type, that is just poor game design, as poorly handled rewards as a game can make. Any item category should have multiple venues for being obtained, so that if people don’t like certain content, they don’t lose out on play options which affect the entire game because of exclusivity to a single game mode they don’t enjoy.

Kidel.2057:

Ice bow linecasting does 64k dps in pvp gear. This makes every other class useless.

Lol, burning. Lol nerfs! Ice bow got even buffed.

Everyone knew icebow was overpowered before the burning buffs, and on behalf of the intelligent portion of the elementalist community, I apologize that some of us whined until those balance changes were nixed. So I guess I shouldn’t have said only, my apologies.

But the difference is, in spite of its power, the icebow was not enough to push the Ele so far in to competitive play as much as we see it now. The remainder of the class just didn’t bring enough to bear. Now, the remainder of the class brings more than enough and we’ve got icebow on top of it.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

You get to fly and they don’t.

But there are a ton of enemies that can fly, just not that specific one.

RoseofGilead.8907:

Well, certain cavaliers (like the one in that first story instance for the beta) can be knocked off their mounts, leaving both the mount and the rider to attack. But yeah, the other ones stay mounted the whole time and are one unit.

It’s called a model. And I can tell just by looking at them those are in fact two models with synced animations, especially because that would just be ridiculous and add unnecessary difficulty as one model. Probably two different rigs even, but can’t say for sure on that one without playing with the rig myself.

InsidiousWaffle.7086:

The mounted enemy is one model, not an actor riding another actor. They don’t have a mechanic in the game for it. All they did is add a new type of enemy, and IMHO it’s really cool. Don’t give negative feedback in an awesome new type of enemy design

And as for you, GW2 launched with the technology to have mounts, quit fabricating nonsense to get cool points with the antimount hipsters.

There are two ways to animate and rig in video games, one is prerendering, basically the animations are baked out and when the game queues them up they play from start to finish without any ability to be modified or changed in live action. Most games go this way because its easy and saves on resources, even though it has huge drawbacks. The two biggest examples being ‘super armor’ frames and not being able to control your movement while there is an animation queued up. The important thing to note in this situation is that while it is possible to have two rigs work off each other, its difficult, and will carry over the same issues that one model has to two, and it will never look as good as the second method.

The second way is with a rigging engine, basically the game creates a setup of points and lines that move joints and maintain straights based on how the character moves, and then the engine acts on those points when an action is queued up. You can take this even farther, and create single models which have multiple rigs that can operate independently of each other. And this is how GW2 characters are made, there is an upper and lower body rig that allows us to control the upper body by swiveling our vision, while still allowing us to move our lower body to control our movement. This method, while much more resource intensive and taking much more engine development, makes rigging interactions between two models much more simple and organic. You basically just animate both characters together like you would any action by themselves.

Ipso facto, the tech for mounts is already there, ANet just doesn’t want to make mounts. Which I don’t really mind personally, WoW is the only game I’ve ever got a mount in, and I hated that game. But this isn’t WoW, and ANet could make mounts an awesome addition to the game; or they could totally screw it up in every way imaginable. No telling until they day that decide to make them, if they ever do.

But what I can’t abide by regardless of that fact, are people who think its so important to dump on what other people enjoy and hope for that they will fabricate lies about a subject they know diddly squat about just for the opportunity to do so, like the majority of the anti mount clique.

Kidel.2057:

Ele is still the top class in the game, regardless of tempest

Only because of burning, and lets be honest, does anybody with a semblance or intelligence doubt that burning is going to be nerfed?

Alekt.5803:

Conncept.7638:

I use that same trick, though I usually throw sandstorm on top of it, lots of fun.

But to answer your question, I’m specifically talking about attunement overwriting, because there has to be a drawback.

Simple fact is being able to do too many things at the same time without any drawback is both why we have had so little build diversity since launch and why we have so consistently been nerfed in what few builds we have. We need build options that require us to choose clear strengths and weaknesses. It’s far from the only thing we need in order to have decent build diversity but it’d be a good start.

If you want a Conjured Weapon to overwrite the attunement, I adamantly oppose it. When choosing a Conjured Weapon as a utility, you pick the weapon itself, not the attunement it would force to claim a plethora of passives with. Even more if you would not be allowed to attunement swap while wielding the conjured weapon (which is the exact difference between the good and the great users of conjures)

Then you want conjured weapons to remain weak forever, and the elementalist to continue have the game’s lowest build diversity.

I slotted GoEP and conjures every minute I played for the first two years on my elementalist. It’s a blast and I’d hate to see it go too. But its far from the first time we’ve seen functionality from a specific ability removed for the good and overall health of the class.

So long as people won’t consent to give up any of the defensive power we get from attunement swapping, and refuse to accept that more of our build choices are going to have to affect the output of our swapping, we’re never going to improve our build diversity. That’s just a plain and simple fact.

And why on earth would you not be able to swap attunements under what I described? That doesn’t even make any sense, that’s just being contrary for contrarieties’ sake.

Vlad Morbius.1759:

you really need to play the other specializations because you’re seriously mistaken. I took a tempest and wrecked critters in less than 50% of the time it took to take them don as a Reaper. Worst yet, i did this as a glass canon so you’re not seeing the whole picture here.

That has nothing whatsoever to do with the tempest, that’s just the ele.

Alekt.5803:

Conncept.7638:

And I still hold to the most repeated idea concerning conjures on these forums, that they need to overwrite an attunement when cast. Example, you’re heavily fire spec’d, you slot lava axe, attune to earth, and cast lava axe, you now have a lava axe attunement in place of the earth attunement, acting as a second fire attunement.

Actually, I use the Conjured Weapons for the exact opposite of this proposition. You want conjures to act as if you were attuned to the represented element (Fire axe= benefit from fire passives while used; Hammer benefits from air passives while used)

I am using conjures for the opposite. For instance, I can use Conjure Earth Shield with Pyromancer’s puissance, so I can stack might every 1/2 seconds due to the fast auto-attacks and casts. I can also manipulate attunements for super speed while wielding it.

Though, if you meant that using the conjure grans an additionnal attunement representing the element of the weapon (Attuned to fire while wielding earth shield = benefiting from Earth + Fire at the same time), the idea needs discussion. Some combinaison might be way too good. For instance, Stone Heart + Pyromancer’s Puissance at the same time.

I use that same trick, though I usually throw sandstorm on top of it, lots of fun.

But to answer your question, I’m specifically talking about attunement overwriting, because there has to be a drawback.

Simple fact is being able to do too many things at the same time without any drawback is both why we have had so little build diversity since launch and why we have so consistently been nerfed in what few builds we have. We need build options that require us to choose clear strengths and weaknesses. It’s far from the only thing we need in order to have decent build diversity but it’d be a good start.

Alekt.5803:

2. Disallowing conjures to be casted in pair and other random buffs (and over buffs) from your arbitrary selection is telling: you probably do not have enough experiences with Conjures.

On the other hand, conjures suck when used just by the elementalist alone, and are still niche when used in groups. Maybe if they lost their group functionality, at least by default (untraited) they could actually get power worth using by the elementalist alone and be more generalized in their use in a group.

And I still hold to the most repeated idea concerning conjures on these forums, that they need to overwrite an attunement when cast. Example, you’re heavily fire spec’d, you slot lava axe, attune to earth, and cast lava axe, you now have a lava axe attunement in place of the earth attunement, acting as a second fire attunement.

There is no over exaggerating how much this one change would help our class both mechanically and thematically.

My problem with this is that whenever ANet makes ‘difficult content’ whatever mechanics are part of the fight are on top of an HP pool that takes three hours to burn through, attacks that one-shot bersker and nomads alike and mob spawns that you can only deal with by ignoring them. Okay I’m exaggerating, but honestly not by as much as I’d like to be.

Please ANet, for the love of all that is good please make the content predominately about the mechanics and NOT the stat system.

xarallei.4279:

AP is a terrible way to judge anything.

Any way of judging a player’s efficacy in a party other than their level and seeing them play is a terrible and inaccurate way to judge, hence why the developers have all but said they will not add in a gear check in any form, ever. And even level only qualifies because most of the game content has level requirements.

I think ‘cheated’ is a strong word, I do admit feeling a bit undervalued as a veteran player though.

Especially with the ‘veteran’ outfit. I didn’t agree with the outfit changes when they made them, don’t agree with them now. The outfit system has resulted in lower and lower quality visuals and play from the gemstore content. Getting an outfit for supporting ANet for three years is like having my opinion thrown in my face as a ‘reward’.

• Ride the Lightning skill:
  • Increased recharge increased 20 seconds to 40 seconds.
  • Recharge is now halved if the player strikes a foe.

:(

nexxe.7081:

ronpierce.2760:

Test.8734:

Ayrilana.1396:

Test.8734:

Ayrilana.1396:

sorudo.9054:

Ayrilana.1396:

Test.8734:

Pistol Joe.3741:

Dont forget gw2 is not like other games .. we always keep getting new stuff !

Sure, sure. In 3 years, we got in game:

• Illustrious armor (the ascended one)

• Glorious armor (the PvP one) and its reskin, Glorious Hero

• Carapace and its reskin, Luminescent

• Hellfire armor

• Radiant armor

Meanwhile, the Gem Store got:

• Aetherblade armor

• Primeval armor

• Braham’s armor

• Phalanx armor

• Flamewrath armor

• Zodiac armor

• Rampart armor

• And 24 (!!!) outfits

So yeah, we definitely keep getting stuff… In the Gem Store. We got even less armors in-game than in the Gem Store, and that’s considering how ArenaNet said they would focus the Gem Store in outfits, not in armors.

They made that statement after they started doing outfits. You can’t make their statement retroactive and then accuse them of lying.

in GW1 we had in one year more new armors in-game then we have gem store armor skins in GW2, in my eyes they have become extremely lazy.

In GW1, you had only humans to play as which is much different than what we have in GW2. More work is required to create GW2 armor than GW1 armor.

Uhuh.

So the excuse “GW2 is more complex” is the reason why, 3 years after release of the original Guild Wars, we had:

• More than 160 new maps (in GW2, 3 years later we have 3 new maps)

• More than 150 new armors completely available in game (in GW2, 3 years later we have 15 new armors in-game)

• 4 new professions (in GW2, 3 years after release we have zero new professions)

• More than 70 new skills for each of the core professions, not counting the generic PvE only skills (in GW2, 3 years after release we have a single new profession specific skill for each profession)

And so on, and so on. Despite how, at the time, ArenaNet had half of the staff they have today.

Considering how by then we had ten times more armors – again, ten times -, maybe the lesson here is that, if GW2 is that complex, ArenaNet tried to bite more than they can chew.

I suggest playing Guild Wars 1. That game is almost completely different than GW2.

Indeed.

Gameplay wise they are incredibly similar. But you are right in saying that they are very different: one was a big success, able to fund both constant updates and even a sequel, while the other has been such a failure that it has been forced to go free to play after enduring multiple content droughts and having next to no content added to it.

And one had, in two years, 150+ new armors available in game. The other has had, in three years, 15 armors available in-game. With the massive amount of… 4? Armors incoming.

That’s a lot of buzz in one post. 4 (per armor type), fits 5 races, isn’t made to fit 10 polygons. Drought due to an expansion to give the game (most of) the things it direly needed to keep people happy, a combat system (while buggy at times) that’s better than just about any other standard MMO out there, and so on, but eh, whatever. Buzz words are fun.

Enjoy GW1, bud.

The polygon count is irrelevant since the engine, tools, and techniques today are vastly superior and actually make production quicker than ever.

Wow this guy has no idea what he’s talking about.

I honestly agree with yours and the OPs sentiment, they had three years to work on this after all, and this is just… not enough, nor high quality enough, to justify 5/6ths the price of the original game.

But good gosh have you ever even opened Maya or Zbrush? Do you know why video games are continually getting shorter and smaller with each generation? Because what you said is completely false, the pipeline hasn’t been made easier, its been made nothing but harder. You are correct that most of the improvements to graphics are in the forms of new map types which totally disregard polycount. But all that means is that making those maps is now required work on top of the modeling and sculpturing that was already done in previous generations. The only thing which has really been made slightly easier since the 90s is animation because of improvements in rigging, literally everything else has got nothing but more complicated, more time consuming, and more expensive.

VodCom.6924:

Conncept.7638:

Xillllix.3485:

Ohoni.6057:

Think beyond the “new” factor and you’ll realize all the flaws it has starting with the base core mechanic. Tempest should decrease your attunements cooldown, not increase it.

Decrease. . . lol, no.

Why not? Skills have internal cooldowns anyway, all you would be getting would be a faster attunement boon. Mesmers are getting dual shatter from stealth. Single shatter is already game-breaking OP.

Because that’s already what the arcane tree does, and people have wanted less swap-centric and more elemental-themed builds since launch.

This was, unfortunately, the wrong way to address either issue. The overloads don’t reward you for staying in an attunement for longer, they punish you staying in it for more or less the same amount of time as the base class.

You lost me on the word punish . How does adding an extra option to each element punishes you?

How does either being forced to stay in one element for twenty seconds or lose it for twenty seconds reward you? It doesn’t. It is a punishment for playing the class the way all its vanilla content most heavily encourages you to play it, and a punishment for playing the way the elementalist community would most like the class opened up to, mono and duo-attunement builds. Overcharges are literally the worst of both worlds combined in to one mechanic.

Zenith.7301:

It’s just a crappier version of healing signet…. it should do more if the heal is not going to be changed.

Every passive healing in the game (save healing turret, and that can be killed) is just a lesser version of healing signet. Unabashed favoritism at its finest.

Xillllix.3485:

Ohoni.6057:

Think beyond the “new” factor and you’ll realize all the flaws it has starting with the base core mechanic. Tempest should decrease your attunements cooldown, not increase it.

Decrease. . . lol, no.

Why not? Skills have internal cooldowns anyway, all you would be getting would be a faster attunement boon. Mesmers are getting dual shatter from stealth. Single shatter is already game-breaking OP.

Because that’s already what the arcane tree does, and people have wanted less swap-centric and more elemental-themed builds since launch.

This was, unfortunately, the wrong way to address either issue. The overloads don’t reward you for staying in an attunement for longer, they punish you staying in it for more or less the same amount of time as the base class.

Pretty much. What is there to be excited about?

I’ve already played frontline support Ele, because it was perfectly viable before they nerfed all sustain when ‘balancing’ the old DD cleric ele build. Which I agree, was necessary because of our self sustain, but then they gave us no viable defense (while we still have the lowest baseline defense by a huge margin) anywhere else, and never expanded water with any more gameplay besides mindless sustain and cantrip procs.

Same goes for aura builds, we had them, they made them worse, and worse, and worse, and then finally took them away. And are now giving us back with a bright and shiny sticker that says NEW. I mean they only took them away two months before the tempest was preview, did they really think no one was going to call them out on this?

Not really a boycott, there are just a lot of people who’ve taken an honest and practical viewing of what the expansion offers and decided that it isn’t worth what ANet is asking for it. Or, that there is no point in buying anything that’s apparently going to be free if you wait a year or two anyway.

I’m one of them, still haven’t prepurchased, waited all the way until the very last announcement yesterday hoping something would change my mind about prepurchasing, and it didn’t, in fact if anything the free to play announcement made it all worse.

Going free to play is strongly associated with the weakening, decline, and oncoming downfall of gaming companies; I had confidence in their previous business model enough to prepurchase the vanilla game on the day it opened, and I don’t have that confidence with this new approach.

No offense to WP, he’s a nice guy and I love his stream, but he ain’t exactly hard to please, especially since he has heavy incentive to like the content, he makes more money the more people that like it and play GW2, and liking it himself convinces other people to do likewise.

If he doesn’t like it (and he doesn’t, he blatantly stated he didn’t see himself playing it in the expansion over any of the other specs or even the base Ele) it has to be pretty bad.

Seabreeze.8437:

I think ele sword and thief rifle are pretty much necessary if we don’t want another forum war on our hands, and this is coming from someone who is totally satisfied with thieves getting melee staff.

Gonna be a while, tho.

Most of the ele community would be fine with warhorn, if its mechanics weren’t something we already have, which we don’t don’t use because ANet nerfed it out of viability in their blind crusade against the DD Ele.

As for me (in order I play them)
Elementalist: Pistols – Dual, not debatable, do NOT split OH and MH into two specs. Hoping for a roguish spellslinger Gunmage like you find in Final Fantasy and Warmachine.
Necromancer: OH Axe – I just want my old retaliation DS build back…
Engineer: Mace? Basically just so I can use that one single wrench skin. Honestly I’d prefer more kits more than anything, and a REAL tool kit, not a crappy grab bag it.
Mesmer: Daggers – More roguish, dark, tormented, a lot more stealth.
Ranger: Rifle – Hunter
Thief: Rifle – Sniper – Yes I know we already have one, they can fill that same niche while having totally different gameplay.
Guardian: Rifle – HOLY BOLTS, have a neat idea for a sort of long range siege guardian, think Alexander from Final Fantasy.
Warrior: Scepter (lol, kidding, I have no idea) Though I suppose they could just use a scepter as a club, caveman spec?
Revenant: Not playing a class with 1/10th the customization of the base classes.

EDIT: OFFhand, I meant offhand axe…

Drayos.8759:

Malchior.5732:

I wonder how long people will defend the devs with these weird excuses.
> Ele is already OP so Tempests needs to suck
> Tempest is for CGC
> Of course Rogue classes are cooler and bunker Mages are hard to design for(Reaper…)
Etc.

No one needs to defend the devs; they can speak for themselves, if they care.

It isnt defending a dev… its just ridiculous.

“I wanted Sword, i wanted a more mobile Assassin styled Play” guess what? THIEF, they have that playstyle in the game they Dont NEED to give it to Elementalists, theres no REASON to repeat playstyles on every other proffession HENCE why there is VARIATION in choice of what proffession to play!/

U picked to play a Caster, Something at Nature is a Mage, OFCOURSE its New elite was going to be a Mage and Become more Sided towards being Magical then becoming a Swordsman, it just makes NO SENSE why to give Elementalists Swords fundamentally U ARNT swordsman, Why Use a Sword if u blow the face off someone via fire… NO CIRCUMSTANCE would someone take into Melee When u have Magic…. I certainly would NEVER go punch a guy abot if i simply could burn him alive, hence why “never bring a Dagger to gun fight”…

In every situation tempest is more suited to elementalist then Swordsman could ever be and thats why u got it, u dont like it but at the end of the day Keep the kitten proffessions in there roles..

I’d run this through google translate but I’m not sure what language to pick on the ‘translate from’ column.

The root problem is that the developers view of the elements and attuning is completely flawed, has been since launch, and the fiasco that is the tempest only drove the point home.

Agent Noun.7350:

Conncept.7638:

On the other hand, you got charged for a free game.

No, I didn’t. I bought a game three years ago that has received a rather dramatic price drop today. That’s what happened. What you’re saying is like… if you bought a game on Steam for $60 three years ago, it’s on sale for $5 today, and you start saying, “I got charged $60 for kitten game!” It’s an absurd statement.

The free players coming in today did not get to play for those three years. I did. They also lack a lot of the privileges that I have as a paid player.

Nope, the price was removed, not dropped, that’s the flaw in your analogy. By the same logic you used to claim that you are owed nothing because of the play time you had, you are owed something for the game play you paid for. And frankly, its a stronger argument, GW2 is not a subscription game, you were not charged by time for the game but by content. And now that that exact same content is given away for free, you, he, and all of us were charged for free content.

Agent Noun.7350:

dane.4638:

maddoctor.2738:

dane.4638:

After all that everything I paid for and worked for is just free to everyone else if they want it. My money (which I work for and dont have tons of) means nothing to Arenanet obviously and if I want to play the new content I have to pay the same amount as someone who never supported this franchise who get everything I have paid hundreds of dollars for. I have to pay this outrageous amount for each of my 6 accounts!

So the loads upon loads of releases you got for free mean nothing to you? You got up to 40 completely free content releases (based on when you bought the game) and you still complain?

I didnt complain about what I got in content. Im upset that I have the pay the same ammount as someone who just buys the expansion and get everything I paid for for included which amounts to a large sum where I come from. No worries though I guess my investment has just become basically a ftp account because I wont buy hot for 6 accounts at that price and doubt if Id even pay once the price drops as Id already be so far behind everyone Ive played with this long.

You’re not owed anything. Neither am I. I preordered this game before launch, played in the betas, and I’ve played for three years. ArenaNet doesn’t owe me crap, because I got the game I paid for.

And you still have more than a free account does! Quite a bit more.

Under that exact same logic, he was charged for a free game, and so were you.

Behellagh.1468:

Conncept.7638:

Boy is that super convenient for Anet, nope, no way gem store is changing, for sure.

That’s not the Gem Shop, that’s the exchange.

So F2P can’t buy gems with gold. Sure they can buy gold with gems, which will lower the exchange rate for non-F2P to buy gems with gold. So this is bad how?

Because its a temptation for corrupt gemstore practices, they now have a massive amount of players which they have no way of making money off of except through the gemstore, EXACTLY what the buy to play model protected us against.

And as much as ANet denies their involvement, as majority shareholder Nexon does legally have a say in the monetization of GW2. You ever played a Nexon game? Imagine a casino IN HELL where you gamble for your basic needs for survival and you’ve almost got an idea of how bad they can get.