Guild Wars 2

Is it still open on tarnished coast right now?

I didn’t experience lag on claw of jormag like other people just did (sorrows furnace kill 15mins ago) but I did have the crystals spawning on me non stop in phase 2. I don’t recall that ever happening in the 30+ kills I’ve done on jormag prior to this past update.

I’ve found since the last update a week ago that many word events, be it orr temples, dragons (claw, teq, shatterer) are doing “odd” things. For instance, I just finished the claw of jormag fight and 5x I was stuck in the ice pillars during phase 2. I’ve done the fight 30+ times and never had one “spawn” on me where I was stuck in it.

Is it me or does it seem the chest drop rates are lower? The bonus still gives the yellow item, but usually now I have to do 7-8 events to see a single yellow in with the regular chest, (be it a crafting item, armor or weapon). I recall prior to the update, and this could be how I’m seeing it, it felt there was a higher drop rate of items.

The temples are non-existant and very difficult now in orr. The champions spawning and one shotting everyone and the over abundance of elites to players is absurd. In some events I see a 2 or 3 to 1 ratio of elites to players. If the purpose is to get people to guest to other servers just to find the open temples, then allow more than 2 guest passes a day and establish a system to check temples. I think it’s silly that it’s come to us having to post on a forum what temples/events are open on each server because we can’t field enough people to do event. The purpose of the events is to bring people together, the challenge is too great that most walk away from it or don’t feel like the hassle.

I understand anet is trying to stop some of the farming, but let’s be real here, unless we farm events for items and creatures for drops, there isn’t a lot of methods to make currency in game, you find yourself spending more on waypoints and repairs than earning. This anti-social setup for the events doesn’t bring us together, it pushes people apart to the point where less want to do the events, aka the scaling needs to be fixed. yes, a challenge is good, but instant 1 shots all the time? Ridiculous amounts of enemies and difficulty whereby pushing the avg casual gamer away. The open world pve is casual, it shouldn’t require massive strategy and massive amounts to accomplish, that’s what dungeons are for. If I recall a rough wording before of anet saying dynamic events happen all over, and for players to jump right in and help. As of now, that’s not the case for orr temples specifically. Please fix this last “fix” that broke something that didn’t need fixing.

I haven’t gone for karma gear since start of the game, been slowly but surely saving it up. I finally have enough to buy all the pieces of PVT, but can’t seem to find a group that can complete grenth or most of the others for that matter. There are too many high level spawns that don’t add to an events ambience, they detract from it by kicking mud in your face when you’re already trying a challenging event.

That would be great, I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve tried to do Grenth and jonez dies too easily. I’ve tried healing him, but as OP said, the champs end up ruining his day too quickly.

I second a waypoint near the north or one to the far south, this allows for porting on death rather than running from so far away.

Darn, used my 2 guest passes today.

Sorrows Furnace, we’re making a push for grenth!

The back piece for grenth is what i’m after. I meant different stats not “different style”, misworded on my part.

Same here, I seem to miss when servers open, just realized this forum. Planning to pick up a few pieces of gear from grenth that I’m making for another build (yeah yeah some is the same as baltha stats, but I prefer the grenth style).

Are there any US servers with uncontested/open cathedral of silence right now aka grenth? I’ve been watching the timers for days and can’t seem to find any. In addition, noone seems to want to do it on sorrows furnace.

I used a different credit card this past week to buy some gems. Today I attempted to purchase $50, 4000 gems using a different credit card and it was declined. I then attempted to use paypal and got the same result. I’ve been reading about this antiquated anti-fraud system in place and I think that is what got triggered. I assure you, they are legit transactions. The ticket I submitted is Incident: 130428-001857, please fix this and update me on what is going on; I think this is a huge hassle as I’m trying to spend money on the game but am blocked in some way.

I second not playing elementalist since last fall due to how horrible they felt. I don’t want to say they didn’t feel like a caster, but they surely felt very underpowered. I ran staff and full exotics then and still have now. Have they balanced the class any further from what it was? Are they more viable for pve than they were in october/november 2012?

It’s good to see some positive changes coming to the elementalist. It’s far from all the changes we need, BUT it is good to see THEY WERE listening to some of our suggestions and comments and are implementing some fixes.

Yes, we’ll still have some issues, but thanks for listening to us and starting the balancing of the class! +1

I see the obstructed randomly even on a level field and being within range. Normally doesn’t impact me on land, but in water when it happens it’s gotten me killed a few times.

The damage is too low (imo) and should be bumped up 15-20% to compensate for the slow cd’s in the rotation.

From what I’ve read they nerfed the heck out of elementalist in beta weekend 2 & 3.

Tornado has the potential to be a devastating elite, but it’s too weak in it’s current state. It doesn’t throw back often enough, too small an area, and the damage is too low.

The elementals is nice (the only decent elite we have). Once in a while I’ll use that and the glyph to have 2 elementals at once up to fight.

I completely agree with you, but I’m not leaving the game; I just have other characters I’m playing. I think it’s silly I need to play other characters waiting for the elementalist to be fixed. I do realize the system they setup is a very complex one, getting rid of “healers” and “tanks” and all and making each class be able to play each role is very difficult. What I’m saying is I can understand where it may take time to balance things out, though it would be nice for an official announcement stating some intentions on what they plan to fix and such; it’d definitely quell some of the frustration everyone is feeling.

Elementalist was my main in guild wars 1, and the same for guild wars 2, but after playing a theif, warrior, and mesmer, ele is definitely severely lacking. I also don’t understand why they “fixed” something that wasn’t broken before actually fixing the bugs. I’m not their programmer, nor their project manager organizing/priortizing, but it does seem strange. One can only hope the data they’re collecting is helping them fine tune everything. Heard of the saying “it always gets worse before better”, that’s what I believe here. Elementalist is going to continue to be broken further until it’s the priority to fix. Who are we to say “do elementalist before necromancer” or “balance us before the others.” Who knows how they decide, but either way one can only hope we’re not at the bottom of that short list.

In addition, hopefully all the postings here let them know “hey, theres problems, here they are now fix them” rather than completely ignoring them. I can see why they haven’t posted (to avoid the people who only come on here to troll), but an official announcement or a sticky on the forum would be nice. “Hello players, we realize the elementalist has some issues, bugs, and balance problems, we’ll be fixing it soon as we progress fixing other issues in game.” Problem solved and a temporary hiatus to all the trolling and complaints.

I’ve spoken to several other elementalists in game who’ve hit 80, fully geared up, tried several specs, and all of their conclusions follow what everyone here is saying (too low survivability for the amount of damage we do). Hopefully something comes about soon, the game has been out for a month and a half now.

I got in from work tonight and saw this post, you got me to laugh a little here. I don’t know how they priortize fixes or what their system is, but it would be nice for some type of acknowledgement rather than constantly breaking my elementalist even further.

I agree, it’s much easier to just hit ` out of combat to swap a pre set of weapons from bags rather than having to bring up the hero “H” then manually drag and drop. In addition to the items being rearranged in bag and potential to accidently sell. Aside from that, it’d streamline and make it more accomodating for everyone to test multiple weapon sets without the hassle and no balancing issues with it as it’s purely aesthetics.

Efaicia.3672
Exactly what I was saying. None of us know what anet’s plans are, and frankittenhey don’t need to tell us, but it would be nice to get a quick note saying they’re taking what we say into consideration or they’re looking into re-balancing etc.

I know they’ll fix it in time, they did the same with original guild wars and the quarks of the ele (played it beta and then early release).

Maybe that’s the problem with the class, it’s not as transparent as others; thus some aren’t able to create the “right” builds. It’s counter-intuitive when other classes can succeed without “the right build” whereas many have said, shown, and explained, that the trait system, skills, and overall class is underpowered. Yes, it can perform as a support class, but taken directly from anet, there are no support classes. With this in mind, the class isn’t performing as intended at least as far as balancing is concerned.

Can I play the class moderately well, yes I can. Do I find situations where I feel underpowered or overwhelmed, yeah. For instance, yes, I can solo a few enemies at once in orr without dying. The problem is it requires a lot of effort, my hp sinks and I get wacked hard whereas other classes seem to do it with less effort and less risk to their overall survivability.

As far as someone wanting anothers build, I don’t see anything wrong with that. There comes a time you get frustrated because things don’t feel as if they’re working well, you’re dying more than others, you take hits more, and you just aren’t putting out damage comparable to other classes. Elementalist being more challenging or not is irrelevant, what matter is what the majority of people interpret and play the class as. Most people I’ve talked to in game, seen posting on these forums and others all have something in common, they have a view of the elementalist being a weaker class, one that tries to perform too many roles at once whereby kittening them to other classes (support, dps, healer etc.) Yes, we get 20 skills based on attunement, but why is there a cooldown from switching one attunement to another? That’s silly, any of them we swap out of are on cooldown, so when we switch to that new attunement we have a CD that lasts a second?

As many have done, I’ve tried respeccing, regearing, and it always ends up the same. I can survive a bit more as a healer/toughness-stacked support character with no damage (my survivability is less than other classes still), stat up and go full on dps glass-cannon and do more damage with lower survivability (my damage is still much less than other classes, conditions included and lower survivability).

The problem lies isn’t that elementalist is necessarily broken (though we do have plenty of bugs), it’s that other classes are given more power, survivability, overall dmg etc than we are so it gives us the impression of our class being weak. How to solve? You could nerf all the other classes, but it would be easier to fix the ele as it’s one class versus many. For all the people that post these ridiculous statements about how they’re so good this & that and there’s no problem, this discussion isn’t about the 1% who can do it right, it’s about the other 99% who can’t (numbers are meant figuratively). Does that mean that 1% know what they’re doing and 99% (which may be the culmination of casual or less-than-hardcore players) don’t have a clue and we must not know the class is good?? That’s silly, if a majority of players are having issues, feel the class is underpowered, and we’re all coming to the same conclusions, trying the same ways to counter balance it and it doesn’t work, then there is an issue with the class. Likewise, the game is designed for EVERYONE, not just the select few people who can “master” the class so-to-say. If only a few can “do it right” then there is a problem right there, it should be playable and usable by more people. Going back to those figurative numbers above, let’s say they buff and fix all these issues right now; is it better to have that 1% then be “overpowered” and the 99% be “balanced to all other classes now” or keep the current as is 1% feels they’re “balanced” and the 99% feel “underpowered”.

Anyones thoughts? Don’t bother trolling, keep it productive. Have I actually summed things up here so those that feel there’s no issue with elementalists can understand where this common ground of frustration with the class is coming?

Do it with a few people in the party and it’ll be easier. There’s a few personal storyline missions along the way that are very difficult to solo.

First off, I love my elementalist and do enjoy the class but it does need more balancing.

We need to be on a fair playing field as far as burst damage high dps is concerned to other classes and have the ability to survive so we can build either way and have both effect us. As it stands, if we build dps we’re not putting anywhere near as much damage out as other classes, nor as survivable can we take the hits.

I’m not even sure how they would specifically balance it out, but I almost say a complete rework of the class so if you are glass cannon, yes you die fast but do more damage (as it should be, as other classes have when spec’d that way), and as support, it would be more tank-ish.

Yes, I can see people may be playing classes differently, but isn’t that the entire premise of gw2, play the class how you want? I don’t see why all the other classes have the damage output, or tanking ability inherently in them whereas it’s kitten for elementalist. Call it “playing it wrong” or such, but when most people are having the same issue regardless of spec, gear, or being casual or hardcore gamer, the class has a problem within it.

Yes, there are too many dry comparisons between a “wow mage” and the elementalist and how they differ or are similar. I don’t expect any of my characters or classes to be like wow. What bothers me is that there shouldn’t be a “you’re playing this class wrong” when there’s multiple specs and such. Call it a support class, but why do all the others (played mez, warrior) feel OP and ele feels so weak.

Regardless if armor isn’t that big a deal, regardless if toughness is only minor or vitality, we’re under powered as a class. Play as as support/utility healer and you lose the damage aspect. Play as full dps glass cannon, and the damage just isn’t there. I’m not comparing a wow mage or other casters, but the sheer fact that other classes in the game if in full glass cannon dps, they do some serious damage (on top of a much higher vitality/armor/toughness built into class) whereas we’re usually stiffed on damage. Likewise, go as healer or support and yes the damage goes down quite a bit, but it feels half-working.

Again, no comparison to all other mages or casters, with that in mind, our class is kitten for doing the damage that others are capable of doing (not even including the others can take more hits as full dps). I expect to die often as full dps, but I also should be able to kill mobs (pve dungeon) in a similar way to other classes with high damage. The class itself is inherently more difficult, anyone doing an elementalist realizes that, but even when mashing between different trait setups and full dps, we just can’t compare to others.

Again, I don’t expect to “play like all the other mmo’s” out there, it is guild wars 2, but I do expect my class to play on a fair playing field to other classes. If we can’t play as a glass cannon or play as a true support tank-ish as other classes, we have no purpose and the class has no forseeable future.

I completely agree with most of the statements here. I realize Guild wars 2 is different from the traditional mmo in many ways, but also that it needs to stay in tune with some features in order for the class to even have playability and relevance.

For one, in most mmo’s when the damage of a class goes up, relatively the armor/protection/health goes down, not arguing that. When the armor/protection/health goes up, the damage of the class typically goes down. In this case, the elementalist is sub par damage, sub par health and nothing to compensate. Yes, we do have 4 different elements to work with and no weapon swap. I’m statted in full 80 exotic berserker and half +dmg and half +vitality/toughness on my accessories. I swap between both dual daggers and staff. The problem is, I’ve seen crits around 5-6k, but they happen rarely even though I’ve got 51% crit rate. I’m typically hitting for 2-3k non-crit. It’s a slow process.

I feel your pain with being jumped by a few mobs in orrian and dying easily. Yes, we do have some cc, we do have control, but the cooldown/recharge is slow on the elements, and swapping from element to element gives a split second of “load” so we can’t activate immediately. The problem is our class doesn’t perform highly well in either direction without a perfect build or perfect setup. I’m not arguing that a well played player can do it right, but what about the casual player. All the other classes are able to be played as a tank (high dmg absorbing) and glass cannon (high dmg, lower health) whereas we can’t do either very well. We are a mixture somewhere in between with mediocre damage and mediocre protection. If I spec for protection, I lose my damage, and vice versa. Other classes don’t have this issue.

I did play gw1 from beta on and saw the many changes the elementalist went through. I don’t necessarily want the typical “mage”, I just want the class to be on par with the others as far as being able to survive, and to do damage. What good is the class if we’re kittened either way and “can’t play the way we want” which is part of the big overall picture that each class is supposed to be playable as.

I’m up for thoughts and keeping this thread going, hopefully with enough valuable suggestions Arenanet will make the appropriate changes to balance the class out.

I second that our elite skills aren’t that great. Yes, spawning an elemental or phoenix may be useful, but there’s another glyph for that already. The tornado is useful underwater, less for non-water combat. The rest of the skills are too situational or lack luster. I feel we should have a few elite skills that better round particular builds. Such as one that’s a massive aoe and small heal, another that’s applys conditions based on what element we’re in for dot dmg (or add a heal over time). I would even love to see a further trait that adds a specific time bonus to stats. Given we’re so squishy, our hp, armor, and toughness are at the low end, and our damage doesn’t compensate, something like arcane power, but with the ability to buff for X time, like +200atk power for 2 minutes or something of that sort.

This is a double edge blade here, increase the gold people buy and more people are going to take advantage of spending real money on the game (which does provide some real advantages for gear/weapon etc buying) but not to the point that it inbalances the game. The other side of it is seeing the constant spam of chinese gold farmers selling 4-5x more gold for the same price. Granted some of it may be legit/illegit attained, it gets rid of the incentive for players wanting to legimately purchase gold/gems from anet versus 3rd party. I’m not advocating buying chinese gold, as I wouldn’t risk my account being banned, but about $5 for 1 gold (4k gem pack for $50) is a bit ridiculous. When you figure in at lvl 80 waypoints and armor repair goes way up, that cost doesn’t go far.

Solution to devalue some of it? Offer gem deals, such as 50% off sales or double the gems sales. During that time people would purchase more and feel their actual money and time was more valuable. Of course this affects some of the gold2gem and gem2gold exchange, but the market itself balances out over time.

I’ve seen a total of 50-55 total black lion chests drop, and have only gotten 7 or 8 keys total drop. Yes, it’s part of the money making scheme, but that’s a 7:1 ratio. Figure in a blc key is about 125gems, and what you get is typically worth more than the 125 gems (if bought separately). I think the drop rate should be increased for the keys to drive people to want to open the chests rather than spending all the currency on keys.

I do believe there should be a fee on sale, as far as 15%, it seems a bit high. Many people aren’t even aware of the 15% fee and end up selling an item for less than they could’ve for vendoring. There should be something in the UI to tell us “if you sell your item for X, we charge you Y for the listing and Z for the fee for a possible profit of P”