Guild Wars 2

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

John Smith.4610:

Don’t worry, the economy will be ok. We put a lot of effort into keeping it protected.

Three years of more and more rewards ever creeping away from any casual players range of vision, let alone grasp, would say otherwise. The economy isn’t fine now, how is it going to improve with craptons of players with no monetary consequences for what they do with their accounts?

As for this announcement. What? They just said:

“We stand by Buy to Play as the best monetization model for players and developers.” And then in the next breath “Which is why we’re going free to play.”

I think I’m done, I love this game but its turning in to yet another Nexon scam, and I’ve stuck around like a trusting fool one too many times through Nexons business decisions over games I absolutely loved. I am sick of emotionally investing myself in to a world, a story, and characters, and then getting my heart ripped so some old fat suit can have even more spending cash he’s never going to use. We were just bald faced lied to, millions of players were just cheated out of anywhere from 60 to 10 dollars and years or months of gameplay, and we got, as compensation, an outfit.

Can’t any company in this industry maintain its business and artistic integrity? This crap happens so much these days I am seriously on the cusp of giving up on video games period. Back to chapter books and pen & paper RPGs at this point, their creators don’t rip out your beating heart to keep investors happy.

For the last freaking time GW2 is NOT going free to play!

All it is doing is allowing for permanent trial accounts up to a certain level, the exact same thing WoW has had available for five years now. Do you consider WoW to be free to play? Because as someone who regrettably once held a subscription, I can assure it is not.

Still not playing a class with 1/10th the customization choices of every vanilla class.

Frightlight.3796:

Well the say I see it is bunker down is still better healing all around and dps and stealth detector, but the current version of elixer infused bombs would force you into bomb kit. I think it should just be renamed elixer infused explosives and cause all explosion blast type skills too heal.

Then it will just be used with grenades for safer range and triple the proc effectiveness, like every other explosion trait.

The biggest change to player controlled AI just happened last patch, and it doesn’t look like any of you even gave it a chance.

I’ve played for hours these last few days on my minion necromancer and everything I attacked, they attacked, if I broke combat they broke combat, when I told them to use an ability they immediately used it on my current target. They never aggro’d anything I didn’t command them to and followed right on me. The only problem that’s really left is that they can switch targets too frequently and easily, like when you want to quickly pop a disable or something on a secondary target.

It’s been a long road but minions work fine now and I’ll welcome them if they are part of the forge.

An idea I’ve had for a while.

What if spirit weapons were affected by their accompanying weapon traits? Not sure if this would fix everything for spirit weapons, but it certainly would make them a lot more fun, and open them up for more specific use in builds instead of just ‘ALL THE SPIRIT WEAPONS’ builds.

This would mean:
Heavy Light would apply to the Bow of Truth
Glacial Heart would apply to the Hammer of Wisdom
Stalwart Defender would apply to Shield of the Avenger
Right Hand Strength would apply to the Sword of Justice

Note that in the case of Heavy Light and Bow of Truth, they would only proc the trait, not duplicate it, meaning a shared cooldown between the weapon and the spirit weapon. (Because that would be ridiculous otherwise, especially with Heavy Light)

And in the case of Right Hand Strength and Stalwart Defender, because there is no cooldown, their bonuses would stack if you choose to wield the spirit weapon and accompanying weapon, that’s +360 toughness with a shield combo and +30% critical chance hit with a sword combo.

WindGodGirl.6405:

The word and meaning behind “Daredevil” existed before that comic, you know.

And yet still had absolutely nothing to do with the theme of the thief’s specialization. In fact that comic is the only place I can think of where martial arts have ever been in any way associated with the term ‘daredevil’.

coglin.1867:

Conncept.7638:

coglin.1867:

Conncept.7638:

GrandHaven.1052:

You see the thread above this one? Same topic…
Condition engineer is dead unless you focus burning heavy ft build, which isn’t great either.

Bombs aren’t strictly a condition spec, they have one of the highest power scaling auto-attacks in the game and only two attacks that apply a damaging condition.

That said, they’re still terrible, power or condi the grenade and flamethrower kits do everything better.

You appear to be confusing your subjective opinion, with objective fact. Personally I do not feel the functionality of FY compares, and I feel that BK is superior to FT. Because of the size of the fire fields, the pulsing of the smoke field, and a few other aspects. I will take BK over FT when pinned up and leading a force in WvW.

In how many threads are you going to parrot that exact phrase that you clearly don’t know the meaning of? Get it from your word of the month calendar or something? By the way, don’t know if you are the one that did the reporting in our last conversation but I already contacted support and got the infraction reversed from our previous conversation and my posts restored.

And no, again, I’m not the one confusing anything at all. It is a fact that the bomb kit is not a condition only weapon, it has a massively power scaling spammable AoE with higher uptime and potential DPS output than either of its condition damage sources, and the ability to stack might.

It is also not an opinion that the FT can stack might better. The FT and BK fire fields have the exact same uptime, and the FTs blast finisher has 1/5th the uptime. It stacks might better, deny fact all you like, it won’t change it. Another fact, grenades proc crit and non-critical effects at three times the frequency and speed, and the flamethrower does so even faster. The smoke bomb is literally the only advantage the BK has in any situation where you aren’t dealing with a group of completely inert opponents.

You appear to misunderstand my meaning. I do not debate what kit can stack what might or any other statistic that is a fact. I was a dressing the declaration that they are terrible for a either power or condition.

I feel they are very good for either style of build for various utility and area coverage. I mentioned multiple reasons for my opinion. I never suggested there was anything wrong with GK or FT.

Well then what on earth are you going off about subjective/objective word of the month nonsense for? I stated they are not strictly condition, strictly, meaning restricted, as in they neither are nor are not strictly limited to power or condition builds.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Conncept.7638:

Yeah this is something I’ve heard dozens of people say on these forums, who I don’t believe once even slotted EIF.

Can you not say stuff like this?

Simply put, no.

Claiming that something was a mindlessly passive playstyle is nothing short of an accusation and an insult, and one clearly made in ignorance since it is is unequivocally false. If anybody didn’t like EIF then fine, just plainly say so, but don’t BS the rest of us with false pseudo game design garble about ‘passivity’. The EIF bomb builds required no less active play than any other weapon or monokit dependent build for its DPS or its supportive elements. What was stated is flat out false and if you or the person that said it don’t like being called out on it, don’t spew out the bullcrap in the first place.

coglin.1867:

Conncept.7638:

GrandHaven.1052:

You see the thread above this one? Same topic…
Condition engineer is dead unless you focus burning heavy ft build, which isn’t great either.

Bombs aren’t strictly a condition spec, they have one of the highest power scaling auto-attacks in the game and only two attacks that apply a damaging condition.

That said, they’re still terrible, power or condi the grenade and flamethrower kits do everything better.

You appear to be confusing your subjective opinion, with objective fact. Personally I do not feel the functionality of FY compares, and I feel that BK is superior to FT. Because of the size of the fire fields, the pulsing of the smoke field, and a few other aspects. I will take BK over FT when pinned up and leading a force in WvW.

In how many threads are you going to parrot that exact phrase that you clearly don’t know the meaning of? Get it from your word of the month calendar or something? By the way, don’t know if you are the one that did the reporting in our last conversation but I already contacted support and got the infraction reversed from our previous conversation and my posts restored.

And no, again, I’m not the one confusing anything at all. It is a fact that the bomb kit is not a condition only weapon, it has a massively power scaling spammable AoE with higher uptime and potential DPS output than either of its condition damage sources, and the ability to stack might.

It is also not an opinion that the FT can stack might better. The FT and BK fire fields have the exact same uptime, and the FTs blast finisher has 1/5th the uptime. It stacks might better, deny fact all you like, it won’t change it. Another fact, grenades proc crit and non-critical effects at three times the frequency and speed, and the flamethrower does so even faster. The smoke bomb is literally the only advantage the BK has in any situation where you aren’t dealing with a group of completely inert opponents.

GrandHaven.1052:

You see the thread above this one? Same topic…
Condition engineer is dead unless you focus burning heavy ft build, which isn’t great either.

Bombs aren’t strictly a condition spec, they have one of the highest power scaling auto-attacks in the game and only two attacks that apply a damaging condition.

That said, they’re still terrible, power or condi the grenade and flamethrower kits do everything better.

Tobias.8632:

Now matter how badly you want flesh wurm to be a reliable teleport skill, that’s not what it’s for. Being a turret minion comes first.

It would be an amazing teleport skill in PvP if we just had some way of knowing its being attacked besides its death. Place it on far, go help out at mid, when it starts attacking pop it cover far point.

coglin.1867:

Now you lost me when you suggest it is passive. Because that is not what passive means. You very literally need an action to get the benefit. It is simply additive the actions. Just like any trait that adds additional damage, conditions, cc, or any defensive function to a skill.

Yeah this is something I’ve heard dozens of people say on these forums, who I don’t believe once even slotted EIF. It was just as active as any other support build, even a little more so in some cases, not only in its healing but with its AoE disables and might stacking. I mean look at the most popular support build in the game, the WvW staff ele. I love my engi but I’m an ele main, and that build literally boils down to standing 1200 range away from the fight and rolling through the exact same fire/earth/water skill in the exact same order for hours on end. You could teach a monkey to do it as well as any player.

Still not enough, not to make it viable, (and note, I define ‘viable’ as making a sufficiently positive contribution to see a place in play, not ‘is working for the most part’) and especially not to give it the build paths it lost in the trait revamp.

• Short Fuse needs to effect Big Ol’ Bomb and Thermobaric Detonation/Evasive powder keg.
• As stated above Big Ol’ Bomb still needs its radius fixed.
• Bunker Down’s critical hit requirement needs to be removed, at least for the medpack drop. There is NO ferocity/healing gear in the entire game, and even if there was, it wouldn’t be worth slotting ferocity for the games singular sustain/support trait that requires it. And why is it the only such option? Because critical hit requirements were removed for ALL the support sigils for this same reason and there is no reason it doesn’t apply to Bunker Down. And making this change would go a long way to replace the sustain that was lost in when EIF was removed which actually made it possible to run bombs in PvP and gave it a fun support niche.
• Merge Medical dispersion field down with Soothing Detonation. People may have two problems with this suggestion, that its overpowered, or that they make a great combo. And I would remind anyone that says that, that Soothing Detonation heals everyone but you, meaning these traits don’t combo with each other whether they are on two tiers or one. MDS on the other hand, would combo with bunker down for a support option similar to (though admittedly much weaker than) the old IEF trait.

Yeah, I’ve used it, in fact I’ve extensively tried out every combination of healing/supporty traits trying to find something that feels as good as Elixir Infused Bombs, and not only does nothing come close to it, nothing comes close to feeling decent or fun.

Technically the Mesmer class mechanic isn’t clone generation, the class mechanic is shattering.

And I’m pretty sure ‘daredevil’ was a development title, not intended to make it to release.

Thief, staff, knew it.

It also comes with a comment: “This promises to be a distracting week..”

Not sure, but I’m wondering if that’s a clue on the functionality of the spec. Maybe they’ll get some of the mesmers functionality that creates distractions on the battlefield, shadow clones or something similar, would definitely fit the ninja vibe.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Honestly, it’s not really a big issues. These are nothing more than the first generation of elite specs. There will be others, and those others will likely fit the theme that some players want for their class. Can’t please everyone.

I for one am looking forward to the Herald more than any other elite specialization, and I’m surprised at the lack of hype surrounding it. It’s way cooler than the Chronomancer and more useful than the Reaper.

Eh, for someone whose played ele since launch, and therefore has been subject to ‘go arcane/water and swap like a mad man’, or be completely ineffective in every game mode, and has seen, absolutely NO effort on part of the developers to fix it, other people getting what would help us a lot is kind of a big deal. It shows they are not even worried about making our class thematically or mechanically fulfilling even in this expansion, that they are willing to put in the effort for some classes, but not willing to put in the effort for others, specifically the elementalist.

But as for crying ’I’m leaving’ and stomping off like a child that didn’t get the toy he wanted instead of giving constructive feedback; bye, the game won’t be missing anything without you that it wasn’t missing before.

A specialization mechanic that the vanilla class mechanic can actually work with, whatever changes that may mean.

And note, I would welcome it if those changes were more to the core class than the tempest.

How the attunement system currently works, enforced swapping for survivability and DPS amp, has always been a terrible system that enforces the zero build diversity we’ve suffered through since launch. Swapping should be a matter of strategy, build choice, and live current in-combat need; not rote-memorized button pressing to maintain the boons and condition cleanse that are the only method for survival and decent DPS against classes with massive defensive and mechanical stat advantages they are not required to do anything to maintain.

Some people just like to look gaudy.

Nesfarro.1265:

Conncept.7638:

What about just giving lifeblast another damage tier? Like so

Life Blast
Blast a foe with life force, dealing more damage the closer you are to your target.
Damage: 246 (1.0)
Damage within 600 units: 345 (1.4)
Damage within 300 units: 494 (2.1)
Range: 1,200

That would suck. We already gonna have rs for melee and ds is supposed to be ranged so its fine as it is with its range. Just the attackspeed is annoying.

Both the theme and the mechanics are already there, you get bonus damage for being within 600 units when the max range is 1200, its a mechanic meant to reward risk and unnecessary closeness to death and danger, which fits perfectly. This just pushes both the mechanic and the theme further.

You could also get rid of the range bonus and replace it with something else, but frankly, deathshroud lifeblast builds are already really fun to use, a lot more than they were back when deathshrouds bonus damage was based on being topped off. They’re just a little underpowered in PvE, and wonky in PvP because of how difficult it is to gain life force without mob deaths, so obviously the last thing they need is major gameplay changes that don’t even affect life force gain.

Plus, have you even actually tried it or are you just being dismissive? Because my shrouded shotgun build is up near the top of the most fun builds I have ever played in GW2, or most games at all.

What about just giving lifeblast another damage tier? Like so

Life Blast
Blast a foe with life force, dealing more damage the closer you are to your target.
Damage: 246 (1.0)
Damage within 600 units: 345 (1.4)
Damage within 300 units: 494 (2.1)
Range: 1,200

Jekkt.6045:

nobody will stay in earth for 15s… nor will you achieve something with it.

if churning earth with 3,whatever seconds casting time doesn’t pay off how do you expect a 15s charge skill to pay off, you would have to oneshot everything with it..

Obviously by making the changes to the base class that have been suggested a million times over on these forums, but this thread isn’t about that, its about overloads, and as such I didn’t include those, so stop trying to drag the thread off topic.

1. Overcharges need to be about the buildup, not the cost. It should require more time in an attunement to use them, and have a short but heavy cost afterwards which scales with completion of the ability.

2. Add in a visual effect for it charging up.

3. They ALL need to have some amount of offense, defense, and utility. They should obviously favor one of the three depending on the theme and existing gameplay of the element, but should still touch at least a little on all of them.

Example
Overload Earth – When you have been in earth attunement for 15 seconds, overload to ride on a pillar of stone, crippling and bleeding foes, providing protection to allies, and ending in an explosion which immobilizes and bleeds. At its completion, your earth attunement skills are locked for five seconds, reduced by 0.5s for each second you did not spend on the overload if it fails to fully complete.
Damage: 178 (0.1775)
Crippled (3s): -50% Movement Speed Unable to move; stacks duration.
Bleed (2) (8s): 352 damage
Protection (1.5s): -33% Incoming Damage
Immobilize (6s): Unable to move. Incoming damage decreased; stacks duration.
Bleed 8 (8s): 1408 damage
Number of Targets: 5
Interval: 1s
Radius: 240
Combo Finisher: Blast
Duration: 5s
No cooldown, but must be charged again no matter how little you completed.

Seriously?

A 50% increase in damage for EARTH overcharge, the overcharge of a CONDITION/ATTRITION DAMAGE playstyle with nearly all its damage based in the bleed condition! How was adding bleeding not the most freaking obvious change to be made?

No alternative explored or even mentioned to the horrid attunement lockout system that feels in no way like a cost for overcharging, but instead feels like a punishment that no amount of buffs will justify.

And NOTHING addressing the fact that 99% of the base class mechanics get weaker when combined with the tempest mechanics.

What is wrong with whoever is working on the tempest?

Xyonon.3987:

Don’t even start to let them think the bomb kit is “fine”. It’s not, they told us the range trait will be baseline and until they fix that, I barely see a reason to use bombs.

Bombs won’t be viable anywhere even if they fix the radius bug. What advantages do bombs have over grenades? One single thing, a higher power scaling auto-attack against five or less targets. And they would have a second, a fire field, except even that is better filled by the Flamethrower.

So other than that single thing, grenades:
Can hit more targets
Have higher attack speed
Have triple the chance of proc’ing critical hits
And can be used from a safe distance

Other than having five or less targets stupid enough to not wail on you while you place bombs between their legs, there is no situation where bombs compete with grenades. There was, under the old trait system, with Elixir Infused Bombs and other traits, all of which ANet decided were ‘unhealthy’ in spite of the craptons of far more mindless uninteractive sustain found on many other classes (looking at you healing signet and soothing mist).

And it’s interesting… clearly a torch wielded by what must be a warrior (since that’s the only heavy armor class left) but what’s the theme supposed to be? We’ve got some kind of animal skull helm complete with horns and a torch covered in animal busts- wolf, bear, lion, and I believe that handle terminates in to a cobra head.

With all those animals the first things that comes to mind would be some kind of warrior that switches between bestial fighting styles, but that seems more like a ranger thing and warriors already have a full set of stance skills.

Most of the elementalist community agrees on it being overpowered, but largely just because of how overturned burning is, and we’ve ALWAYS had sustain, its our only viable form of defense and most of us would love to see it tuned back if they would give us any freaking defense anywhere else! There are a half a dozen threads on it right now in the ele forums if you want to contribute to any of them.

And the entire ele community has SCREAMED FROM THE ROOFTOPS since launch about how awful our build diversity is and what Anet could do about it. Its a preexisting problem that fixing the DD ele and burning has nothing to do with it. ANet has done nothing with three years of feedback, and even most recently taken away two nonviable but at least mostly functional build paths and given them back to us in a specialization. So don’t except any improvements on that front anytime soon.

coglin.1867:

I fail to see the logic in renaming it after the race that doesn’t appearently actually grow.

Maybe it should be called Norn or Charr Growth Hormone then?

Either a marketing rep in disguise or someone who somehow does not have any idea what the term ‘value’ means.

The copper fed salvage-o-matic is not cheaper from a real world monetary perspective no matter how long you use it, it will never give a rate of return that outweighs its gem cost because of the continual copper cost whch could be converted to gems and the fact that it doesn’t even give you the hightest salvage level. It is actually a better value to buy or convert MF stones and make mystic salvage kits in both the short and long run.

Black Lion keys have a near zero rate of return on your investment until you open hundreds. That’s like saying the state lottery is a good deal.

Azel.4786:

If this “new role” issue doesn’t get addressed it will be a big let down as well.

I’m not sure if the developers have forgotten or are outright denying it, but we HAD frontline support before they mercilessly slaughtered it in their zealous crusade against the cleric DD bunker. I played tanky support DD in WvW and PvP for the first year and a half after release, it worked pretty well and was an absolute blast. So even if they get the tempest right its still not a new playstyle, its fixing what they broke in the first place and ought to have restored to the base class by now.

Solori.6025:

I have a story for you.

Once upon a time.
The mesmer’s got buffed.
People figured out what needed to be nerfed and what could be done to make the build less of an issue.

Most mesmer’s agreed that the issue came from two trait’s and suggestions were made to make those traits less of an imbalance.

The devs.
Gathering feedback from the community.
IGNORED THEM.

They nerfed a trait that worked only for one build.
They nerfed an entire utility set that did nothing for the “OP” build people cried about.
They nerfed a weapon that made the dps a tad bit lower.
They nerfed trait’s that did nothing but help mesmer support.

They ignored the trait suggestions that would have brought one very powerful build inline and instead gutted another.
The devs don’t listen.
You will be nerfed in area’s that make no sense.
You will have buffs taken away from you for no reason.
And you will have a random build no on really uses destroyed.
That’s how Anet balances

/saltysaltsalt

You think we don’t know this story?

Once upon a time DD cleric eles ruled WvW and PvP with an iron fist.
Wise eles agreed they needed their active defense toned back
In practically universal agreement, the ele community cried out that Cantrips were the root of the problem.

Anet heard this, then…

Nerfed all weapon healing
Nerfed what was then our least used healing skill
Nerfed the rest of our healing skills
Took away Evasive Arcanas blast finisher
Gave back the blast finisher (sort of)
And finally, made Ride the Lightning in to some sort of nonsensical skill where you lose CD if you don’t hit with it (or if you do and they dodge) a mechanic which makes no sense to new players or veterans alike and is seen nowhere else in the game.

And then a week later they nerfed cantrips.

And then they nerfed them three more times.

And gave nothing back to DD but one measly blast finisher.

Moral of the story, DD is NOT overpowered by any stretch of the imagination. And I’m honestly probably missing a dozen or more stupid changes they made to the old cleric DD while avoiding the actual issue.

Burning is just out of freaking control the whole game over and we have the second greatest access to it after Guardians. And our build diversity problems are a completely different issue that addressing DD power probably won’t even effect.

First, let me preface this by saying I haven’t bought HoT yet (and no, I’m not sure I’m going to) and as such haven’t played the tempest. So if you think that disqualifies me from giving feedback that’s your prerogative and you are free to ignore my post.

However I did watch everything I could find on it from the beta weekend, which wasn’t much by the way, this spec seems to be pretty universally disliked, most played it the least of any spec before throwing up their hands in frustration and switching to another spec, or more often, the Revenant.

And I investigated all that because I really do want this expansion to succeed, I’m no doomsaying hipster who thinks its cool to be disagreeable and unsatisfied. This is not only the first MMO I have enjoyed (and I really enjoy it) but the first I haven’t despised from the perspective of a media artist and designer. But ANet just hasn’t been doing right by it so far, by this time in the vanilla beta I had seen a dozen things that had convinced me to prepurchase the game, I’ve seen no such thing so far, and the tempest has been one of the biggest offenders. In part because of the content of the tempest, but also in part because of how unfitting the base class content meshes with the tempest content. And I have a list of suggestions for that.

1. Revamp less used traits on the base class to reward attunement dedication. From what footage I saw, the fire overcharge was the only one used with the intention of staying in the element after using the overcharge. Why? Fire is the only tree with a trait that rewards you for camping in it, Pyromancer’s Puissance. The base ele needs more traits like this.

• Some good candidates
• Conjurer – Should be rolled in to One with Fire, making room for something new.
• Inscription – Trait supporting condition damage and utility skills for all elements, in the air tree? This trait has never made any sense where it is and as a result never seen any use, put inscriptions somewhere in the arcane tree and give air something attunement dedicated in its place.
• Lightning Rod/Bolt to the heart – These both go with the exact same type of builds and don’t make for a particularly compelling choice, either one could be revamped to be more dedicated to air attunement.
• Diamond Skin/Stoneheart – Cheesiest traits in the game. Either you don’t face an opponent that they work against, and you are worthless, or you do find one, and they are worthless. Either could be revamped as a dedicated earth attunement trait.
• Piercing Shards – Honestly could be amazing if it actually did enough to make staying in water attunement worth its use.
• Soothing Power – Good start, needs to do more for you for remaining in water attunement.
• ALL the ‘training’ traits – None of these do enough for their respective attunements, most are just plain awful. Fire needs to affect conditions, its not a power only tree. Air, 8% critical hit chance? Really ANet? Really? Geomancer needs to affect conditions, it is not only a tanking tree. Water not needs to be so harshly conditional and work with the support idea, not against it.

2. All overcharges should have both offense and utility. Meaning water needs to deal damage, and earth needs to apply bleeds. Obviously they shouldn’t be as offensively based as Fire and Air but without some offense they are never going to feel fun or likely even see play.

3. Overcharges should be more about the prep, less about the cost. Think about DBZ and other anime, and all the epic attacks the characters pull off, the world shaking build up and the pause of brief weakness afterwards. That should be what an overcharge feels like. It should feel epic, and awe inspiring.

To that end, increase the amount of time necessary in an attunement to overcharge up to 20 seconds instead of giving it a 20 second recharge. And for the love of all that’s good add a charge animation, something that builds up then ‘pings’ when you get an overcharge. When an overcharge is complete, there is a brief window where weapon skills from that element are locked, which scales up depending on how much of the overcharge you completed, maxing at five seconds. You can choose to weather this period of weakness or switch to another element that isn’t locked, and intelligent opponents can choose to pressure you, interrupt you, or evade depending on whether or not they want to take advantage of that moment of weakness.

Prisoner.2419:

+1. An entire weapon kit being broken this long is completely unacceptable.

Since when? The developers have left the elixir gun and toolkit in a state where they are only useful for swapping in to for 1-2 skills and then swapping out since launch, and only just fixed the flamethrower that was in a similar state. They seem to be perfectly fine with kits not being able to stand on their own, and bomb kit is probably going to be worthless for a very long time.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Conncept.7638:

We are not guardians, the elementalist is designed to run duo condition builds, burning and bleeding. Balancing our condition builds around monoconditions is the quickest road to ruining our condition builds for the foreseeable future.

Ok, but it’s basically impossible for Eles to apply both heavy Bleeds and Burns at the same time. Each condition is pretty heavily restricted to a different Attunement and neither can apply stacks with long-enough durations to stay up with we switch.

It makes a lot of sense to balance Condi Eles around stacking up both Bleeds and Burns (so that they have to use as much of the profession as possible), but they don’t have to tools to pull that off at the moment.

They do though, have the tools that is.

Lower and spread out the number of bleed and burn stacks we apply per ability, particularly off of auto-attacks, heavily increase their durations, (and I mean really heavily) then give us multipliers for burning and bleeding similar to (but significantly lesser than) guardians Amplified Wrath. Our conditions will last well through some degree of attunement swapping, last through more with condition duration and attunement recharge, and because of the damage multipliers we’ll still output good DPS with less stacks. Plus, our conditions will be less of a problem in hybrid builds because of their reliance on the multiplier traits.

Of course this would also have to go along with my previously stated nerfs to burning and buffs to bleeding, because so long as burning is almost 3x more effective than bleeding per stack, and stacks more easily while maintaining our might, nothing else has any chance of edging its way in to our condition builds.

DD does not need nerfing, burning does, and bleeding needs the buffs that should have gone through in the same patch as the burning changes, were it not for completely uninformed gun-jumping forum feedback.

We are not guardians, the elementalist is designed to run duo condition builds, burning and bleeding. Balancing our condition builds around monoconditions is the quickest road to ruining our condition builds for the foreseeable future.

Buff bleeding up to (0.09*CD) + (1*lvl) + 2.5
Nerf burning down to (0.13*CD) + (1.25*lvl) + 4.5
Buff Amplified wrath up to 20% to compensate guardians

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 max stacks.

Similarly, cantrips do not need nerfing, at least not without major changes elsewhere. They are just our only option for reasonable defense like camping fire is our only option for reasonable condition damage. So its obvious people are going to take them and many, if not most, do so because they feel they have no other option. Same goes for the water tree and the pre-nerfed arcane tree.

The elementalist needs the innate defense all other classes either get from stat advantage or their class mechanic. We have needed this from launch, its been proven a hundred times over with every nerf, buff, nudge, redesign, and QoL change; beyond anyone with a modicum of common sense’s ability to deny.

The developers had the chance to give it to us what we need in the trait revamps and chose not to, because it didn’t match their ‘design goals’. Meanwhile every change they have made in three years that is within their design goals, has left us in the same or an even worse state of build diversity. We are all sick of having one rigid group of traits and abilities we have to take if we’re to expect to not die to anything that gets within range. Its about time they admitted their design goals concerning the elementalist were fatally flawed from the start, pull their heads out their butts, and make some new design goals for the elementalist.

Wolfric.9380:

It doesnt need to be awesom.

But it does need to be ‘awesome’. The cost of casting any of these overcharge spells is freaking ridiculous, imagine how powerful a warrior ability would have to be to justify locking them out of their primary weapon for 20 seconds. That is how powerful overcharges need to be, getting one off should literally leave an enemy in awe and wonder.

EDIT: Or alternatively, they could be made less costly, but that sounds like a lot less fun.

Raif.9507:

The fact you channel an Overload and can’t swap to another element needs to go. Currently if you channel Fire Overload > swap into air it’s interrupted.

To me that makes sense, because overloading is supposed to be about going elementally ‘super-saiyan’, going all in to one element, even all in to one attack.

What totally breaks that fantasy though is the huge aftercast cost and tiny charge time as compared to the spell effect, the ridiculous 20 second attunement lockout and piddly 5 second charge time. I mean, I supposed the after cast could work, sort of that pause that comes after a heroic character uses their ‘ultimate technique’. But it just doesn’t feel that powerful, and I doubt it could be balanced if they made it that powerful . In my opinion the overload should not affect your attunement recharge at all, but instead require more time in an attunement to light off.

(EDIT: I completely misinterpreted what you were saying at first, if anyone saw that first post before the edit please ignore it, I’m tired, cut me some slack XD )

From what I watched, it just looked like more celestial/cleric DD gameplay, he was even using cantrips the entire time and water/arcane for most of it. Never even touched a shout, hardly ever used the Overcharge ability, and did not spend one measly second in earth attunement.

DD is fun and all, probably what I play the most with my elementalist. But this class is so royally screwed every which way when it comes to build diversity that I cannot understand how we, more than any other class, did not get mechanics heavily encouraging new playstyles and buildpaths.

And weapons while they’re at it.

Are you sure you don’t mean vapor form? Because all mist form is is invulnerability with a fancy animation, you can die from conditions while in mist form, and doing so shouldn’t wait until the end of the effect to kill you.

Vapor form (the downed skill) on the other hand, basically appears to kill you because it gives you HP when you cast it, to temporarily get you out of the downed state, and then it takes that HP away when mistform ends. So if your HP drops enough from conditions while in vapor form, the HP it takes away at the end will kill you.

Raif.9507:

Because he’s right and the forums know he’s right.

On a more serious note, it would be nice to see someone who actually understands the class to show off the elite specs. Watching Grouch demolish Chieftain with ease was more impressive than the showing of anything else. Watching Karl get interrupted while overloading twice and nearly dying (500hp) was more embarrassing than anything else. That and Rubi’s comments of “That’s so devastating” and watching 4 hits of 400 per target was nothing more than a /facepalm moment.

This goes for the other stuff to, most of the devs who tried to show killing Svanir/Chieftain almost died themselves (they even joke about it on stream) and I think it would be better to show something like Grouch demolishing rather than Karl nearly dying.

He actually did die. During the stream the chat lit up about him surviving with 1 HP, which was rather… convenient. Pretty sure he didn’t survive with one HP, he forgot to turn his dev invulnerability off before he started the fight.

Is that competition still open? And if so where would one find it? Never even heard of it until now but it sounds like fun.

lordkrall.7241:

So basically: People with the expansion should be mechanically stronger by having access to Elite Specializations?

That is not really what Guild Wars 2 is about.

Well the developers outright stated that they did not want specializations to be a power increase.

But… I’m looking at the tempest warhorn, and all I can see is the dagger on a herculean amount of steroids.

All the fields last longer, are larger, freaking move, AND it has an extra water field. It doesn’t have a blast finisher but can boon stack, share, and buff without blast finishers so that’s not really a detraction.

And the only skill that has longer CDs than the base off hands, is the water field. It has the same average CD of 40 seconds as the base offhands. And when it comes to tbe base off hands, we’re not talking about godmode OP skills here, we’re talking about 40 second CD skills that do nothing but apply an aura or lay down a field for five seconds.

nekretaal.6485:

Stances with a cast time? No thanks

Where did I say they have a cast time? I designed them to work primarily off hit procs for good reason. You have the opportunity to avoid them by avoiding the attacks that follow their activation, no need for a cast time.

EDIT: I also took off the bonus damage in most cases, so doubly not needed. Not that I think the Reaper doesn’t warrant that extra damage, I’d just prefer to err on the side of caution then add it back in later, than make it default and see it removed later.

Brokensunday.4098:

Conncept.7638:

Zantmar.5406:

Conncept.7638:

Elite

• “Chilled to the Bone” – Freeze all enemies around. Gain boons for each foe you freeze.
  Changed to:
  Death Himself – Enter a stance where you freeze enemies and gain boons whenever you damage an enemy.

TLDR: Start at the first word, and read until the last. It’s not that long.

Elite: Black Prison
stance duration 6seconds, cool-down 90 seconds
create a mobile ring (range 300) around you that enemies cannot cross

mobile guard hammer 5
epic monster theme
one can only dream

That actually gives me an idea for one. Y’know how in horror movies, there’s always that moment when they think they’ve escaped the shambling horror coming after them? Then suddenly he just steps out of the shadows right in front of them brandishing his weapon, or grabs them out of nowhere from behind.

What about something like this for the elite:

Bloodsport
When you enter this stance, shadowstep to a nearby enemy within 900 range every second for the duration of the stance, favoring those you have most recently dealt damage to. This shadowstep does not interrupt ability use or channels.

this is interesting but goes against the necro design so it will never happen

I don’t see how. We have a teleports on our base class at all times, and seeing how this specialization is very meleecentric, and would only become more so with stances, it only makes sense we would be given a little more chase potential as compared to the base class or the reaper with shouts.

Zantmar.5406:

Conncept.7638:

Elite

• “Chilled to the Bone” – Freeze all enemies around. Gain boons for each foe you freeze.
  Changed to:
  Death Himself – Enter a stance where you freeze enemies and gain boons whenever you damage an enemy.

TLDR: Start at the first word, and read until the last. It’s not that long.

Elite: Black Prison
stance duration 6seconds, cool-down 90 seconds
create a mobile ring (range 300) around you that enemies cannot cross

mobile guard hammer 5
epic monster theme
one can only dream

That actually gives me an idea for one. Y’know how in horror movies, there’s always that moment when they think they’ve escaped the shambling horror coming after them? Then suddenly he just steps out of the shadows right in front of them brandishing his weapon, or grabs them out of nowhere from behind.

What about something like this for the elite:

Bloodsport
When you enter this stance, shadowstep to a nearby enemy within 900 range every second for the duration of the stance, favoring those you have most recently dealt damage to. This shadowstep does not interrupt ability use or channels.

xarallei.4279:

Conncept.7638:

xarallei.4279:

Guizao.4167:

Elementalist is the strongest class? Every profession has equal potentials.

Well, that’s simply not true. Any ranger and necro will tell you.

That said, OP why would buffing underperforming classes be a bad thing? They need the buffs.

While I agree with your first statement, that second is just completely inane. The condition builds on both my necro and my ranger outpace that of my elementalist by leaps and bounds. While a hybrid build for my ele is undoubtedly better than either. And in the case of my ranger power build as compared to my ele, I wouldn’t say one is flat out better than the other, but there is no amount of sustain that is safer than one of the highest damage weapons in the game at a range no other class can even approach.

You will seriously argue that ele is not flat out better than ranger or necro in pve? Seriously? Sorry, what I said was not “inane.”

Not my fault you apparently suck with your ranger and necro. In the same time I can apply about 12 stacks of burning and 18 stacks of bleeding on my ele, on my necro and ranger I’ve applied 24-32 stacks of bleeding, 10-12 poison, chill, weakness, and various amounts of vulnerability. And 5 stacks of burning on my necro, 10 on my ranger. And in the case of my necro, I’ve also transferred conditions to you at least twice. Your disillusionment with the burning condition does not make the game.

xarallei.4279:

Guizao.4167:

Elementalist is the strongest class? Every profession has equal potentials.

Well, that’s simply not true. Any ranger and necro will tell you.

That said, OP why would buffing underperforming classes be a bad thing? They need the buffs.

While I agree with your first statement, that second is just completely inane. The condition builds on both my necro and my ranger outpace that of my elementalist by leaps and bounds. While a hybrid build for my ele is undoubtedly better than either. And in the case of my ranger power build as compared to my ele, I wouldn’t say one is flat out better than the other, but there is no amount of sustain that is safer than one of the highest damage weapons in the game at a range no other class can even approach.

My opinion on the specialization. Its exactly what the BASE CLASS has needed since launch, reasonable rewards for dedicating oneself to a particular attunement or mechanic. Unfortunately, because of that, it meshes little to NOT AT ALL with the majority of the base class content, and I honestly can’t see what people are going to do with it.