I don’t think they made any new ele builds viable in SPVP. Guardians also did not gain a viable build, overall, this patch added a bunch of new PVE builds but almost no PVP ones for most classes(probably almost all?).
What pve builds did they add? Everything outside lightning hammer ele is bad for PvE, so please take your spvp martyr complex somewhere else.
Lightning Hammer ele is only really all that big of a deal for solo pve content, for group pve content including events, staff fields and d/d auramancer support builds are both viable and valuable. Staff got a lot of small boosts to cast times and aftercast that really add up for dps.
Glad you’re enjoying it!
Jonathan while for the most part I think the Ele changes were for teh positive and for my personal skill usage as a staff elementalist who already used signet of air just for the run speed, I got substantially buffed, there are a few things that really just baffle me.
1. Making glyph of elemental power a stun breaker. It creates a dilemma in use for the skill. While I think making the glyph instant cast may make some people consider using the skill as I think everyone will agree its underused, it is a skill that for its effect, you want to precast so that you can spread conditions… but as a stunbreaker, you’d want to hold onto it to break stuns, which means it’s not being used to spread conditions. It’s just a very odd skill to me. One of the arcane skills probably would make more sense, particularly arcane shield, as it’s something someone might already utilize as defense during a stun (you can cast it and it can protect you while stunned already). I suppose the trait given arcane shield would have to not break stuns, unless you’d be okay with an auto stun break at 25% health. No idea there.
2. Lightning flash.. while I can grasp that it loses its stun breaking effect, I just don’t see people using it for damage. Lowering the cooldown is great, but to only 40s and adding damage as the other form of compensation for the loss of stunbreak doesn’t seem like a lot of people will continue to use the skill. Had the cooldown just dropped to 30s, I think a lot of people would continue to use the skill just for mobility.
and just another question only semi on topic.. would it be possible to make shockwave behave like gust? I like that gust will pass completely through regardless of who’s targetted. Shockwave ends at the targetted mob so you have to be sure to target the furthest one away (even if the’re out of range)
Mesmer got hit as hard as rangers, so did some ele builds, guard/necro over buffed, thief mainly got buffed 2. However leaving thief’s with 25% less possible range than other classes feels like a kneejerk reaction, prob due to tPVP ppl using lob shots. There was never a problem with CB range, community never called for any change, yet here it is. Although slow moving tennis balls that take 3 seconds to hit/refire for moderate damage is so OP :P
Eles got substantially buffed if you weren’t dagger/dagger. dagger/dagger pretty much stayed the same, some scepter/focus skills got lower cast time/aftercast, staff got a LOT of lower cast times/aftercasts, so that increases dps through lower time. There was a small nerf to the trait that gave extra damage per boon, but I think the cast times make up for it, and now you just swap one of your cantrips for signet of air which is now a great stunbreaker (aoe blind, stunbreaker, with passive movement speed, it’s like signet of shadows but does damage (at 1200 range too!) and breaks stuns)
have you read te patch notes?? here they are a few
Lotus Strike: Increased the poison duration from 2 seconds to 4 seconds.
Destroy Shadow Trap: This ability now teleports the thief back to the trap location when it is destroyed. Added range skill facts. This skill now breaks stuns. Using this skill puts Shadow Trap on recharge.
Shadow Pursuit: This ability now grants fury and 10 stacks of might for 5 seconds along with stealth when used to teleport to the enemy who triggered Shadow Trap. This ability now breaks stuns. Using this skill puts Shadow Trap on recharge.
Body Shot: Reduced the aftercast by .4 seconds. Decreased the vulnerability duration to 3 seconds. Increased to 10 stacks for vulnerability.
Pistol Whip: Decreased the time between the stun and the sword flurry.
Scorpion Wire: Decreased the aftercast by .2 seconds. Reduced the cooldown to 20 seconds.
Signet of Malice: Increased the base heal by 33% of the passive ability.
Steal: Reduced the recharge to 35 seconds.
The Ripper: Increased the bleed duration from 5 seconds to 7 seconds.
Deadly Strike:. Increased the damage from 1 to 1.2.
Skale Venom: Replaced weakness with torment.
Dancing Dagger: Reduced the initiative cost to 3.Pain Response: Reduced the cooldown from 45 seconds to 30 seconds.
Hard to Catch: Reduced the cooldown from 60 seconds to 30 seconds.Corrosive Traps: This trait now grants 5 stacks of vulnerability for 8 seconds (up from 5 seconds).
Sundering Strikes: Vulnerability caused by this trait has been increased from 5 seconds to 10 seconds.
Panic Strike: Reduced the cooldown from 60 seconds to 30 seconds.Last Refuge: Reduced the cooldown of this trait from 90 seconds to 60 seconds.
so first read the patch note, try to understand them and them talk
Tell me how ANY of that is going to help in a wvw siege situation? Whether you’re up on a wall, or attacking the keep from outside, now you really don’t have anything to do until the wall/gate is breached. Thieves can basically hope the zerg bunches up and spams fire fields for them to blast for might, otherwise they can sit there and make threatening emotes at the enemies I guess, maybe try scorpion wire once every 20s if they’re on the assaulting side, but on the defending side.. they might as well just sit on the ground and wait for the gates to be breached.
Is this intentional or a bug? Seems odd to have a piece of headgear based on eyewear that you can’t see through.
Um, you can build Siege engines you know…
Yes you can all by yourself build a siege engine during a siege.
what are commanders going to say “everyone let thieves have the arrow carts because they can’t do anything else from the walls”?
If a thief doesn’t have access to a siege weapon now and are assaulting a keep, or on the walls defending one from a force of superior numbers, what are they supposed to do without any 1200 range attacks? Cluster bombing the walls or cluster bombing FROM the walls was about the only thing that reached.
Now I guess thieves can stand there and make mocking emotes?
I’m okay with our land damage as it is, ele with a staff is more a support role with moderate damage. Ele with trident is control with lesser amounts of support and god awful damage in 3/4 attunements. Water is okay but water only really matches the damage of water skill #2 on land.
I can literally hit 4 digits with 4 skills.
1. Water 2 detonation
2. Water 3 detonation
3. Earth 2 at point blank range (barely over 1k)
4. Elite skill
I don’t really see a lot of damage coming off of water 5 but that may be because you zoom right past mobs when you use it.
Vapor form is literally all we have when downed.. the other skill is terrible and won’t interrupt a dunk. Most other classes have a way to interrupt a dunk, warrior has 2, thief has 2, mesmer has 2.
Ele has 1, vapor form.
eles under water can apply burning thats right burning under water, 2 blinds, 2 drops and 1 float a stun, crazy amount of bleeds a pull to skill and not to mention underwater, water attunment is insanely OP almost having mesmer status under water on just 1 attunment.
and not to mention a warp
eles are arguably one of the best classes under water, now think how many classes would kill to have all that on 1 weapon? not even counting utilities
Yeah all that’s great if you’re in a group.
They do awful damage though and if you’re the only one there killing is painstakingly slow.
So I have an exotic trident, the best aquabreather I can find, and it just seems like underwater we do 1/3 of the damage we do on land, it seems really screwed up that the only element I can top 4 digit hits with is water.
Is it a mistake or are we just honestly designed to suck eggs underwater?
So Kasmeer Meade comes to LA for her “special talents” and then you never see her till you get back to DR.
So unless her “special talents” was entertaining Marjory in the bedroom, what was the point of having her involved in this storyline?
I think the reason is that we have to stare at the back of our character for up to hours at a time, and I’d much rather a females curves then some guys but.
That rationale really only works for human, norn, and perhaps sylvari elementalists.
If you’re a male with a female asura elementalist because to want to ‘stare at her curves’ … you’ve got issues.
I wonder if Glyph of Renewal—which no one to my knowledge uses—will be reworked and receive stun breaker status.
Well it’d be slightly more good if it’s instant. I don’t think there are any stun breakers with a cast time anywhere right?
I don’t mind the res glyph so much, but it’d be nice if it was a signet so it had a use when it wasn’t active.
I can’t justify any of the res skills because they only revive DOWNED players, not defeated.
Until that is fixed, there is 0 point in taking ANY res skill.
Reviving a downed player is easier just hitting F for a few seconds.
Reviving a DEAD player takes significantly longer and would almost be worth having a res skill, but yeah, would be nice if they were signets so they had some other passive effect to warrant having them when the have such a long cooldown and niche use.
But nope.. revival of downed players only? Pointless, all of them.
I understand wanting to keep the second weapon for yourself for soloing but being able to give a weapon to someone else is just powerful. Especially in dungeons and pvp/wvw. Throwing down an ice bow for someone else means those burrows just melt, and throwing down a greatsword in WvW… well last night me and a warrior scared off a group of 10 trying to bring down a tower gate, and killed the stragglers. A combination of meteor shower, lava font, and 2 firestorms on their rams sent them running, and downed 1 that didn’t have as quick of reflexes, and then another was just slower at getting away. There’s a reason the FGS is called a “zerg buster” “Thanks for GS! #DPS” he said heh.
Hrm.
Personally I’d like it if they’d just allow you to pick up the second weapon and that would add the charges to the existing charges you have as well as add additional time for the weapon to be active. This way you can still share the weapon as needed but you can also double up and use both as well.
This way you can still share the weapon as needed but you can also double up and use both as well.
This way you can still share the weapon as needed but you can also double up and use both as well.
Yeah I suppose that would be workable in theory it’s just whether or not anet would actually be able to do it that way. There’s no real precedence in the game for that kind of mechanic.
so is Kasmeer just a plot hole or what? She goes to LA, Marjory says she needs her “special talents” I was thinking I’d be working WITH Kasmeer as a sidekick in some quests,
But she’s just gone. Never mentioned in Lion’s Arch.
Which the only explanation is that she’s Marjory’s lover and her “special talents” were just something to keep Marjory occupied in the bedroom.
Glyph of Elemental Power makes 0 sense for why it’d be a stun breaker.
First off, it has a 1.25s cast time. Secondly, it’s a skill that if you use it, which.. I generally never see people use it.. that you want to pre cast so that you can spread conditions, not save it for a stun break.
I’m predicting mist form and armor of earth losing their stun break.
Both are instant and will be able to be cast during a stun even if they don’t break stun.
The result will be Mist form will be used during a stun to take no damage during the stun, but it won’t break a stun, kind of like obsidian flesh, and armor of earth will need to be used preemptively.
They may make mist form’s duration longer to compensate
The single worst balancing act in this game is that classes have different base healths and armors, but roughly the same damage output if specced for it.
It’s simply boggling that warriors are tied for highest base armor, tied for highest base health, and manage to have the highest burst dps in the game. Eles have the lowest armor, lowest base health, and don’t really have all that much damage to show for it.
It forces Eles to go into water just to be able to survive being hit once or twice, and because attunement swapping is the core of our class, we need to go at least 20 into arcane just for that.
Most Conjured weapons are pretty decent. The only two I don’t even semi-regularlly use are the Shield and Axe. I actually leveled up from 30-80 entirely on a Conjure Lightning Hammer and Fiery Greatsword.
My biggest complaint is that other people steal my second weapon. Nothing sucked more than being Conjure spec only to have some random kitten warrior run along and pick up my Hammer then throw it away after a few swings.
Personally I’d like it if they’d just allow you to pick up the second weapon and that would add the charges to the existing charges you have as well as add additional time for the weapon to be active. This way you can still share the weapon as needed but you can also double up and use both as well.
I understand wanting to keep the second weapon for yourself for soloing but being able to give a weapon to someone else is just powerful. Especially in dungeons and pvp/wvw. Throwing down an ice bow for someone else means those burrows just melt, and throwing down a greatsword in WvW… well last night me and a warrior scared off a group of 10 trying to bring down a tower gate, and killed the stragglers. A combination of meteor shower, lava font, and 2 firestorms on their rams sent them running, and downed 1 that didn’t have as quick of reflexes, and then another was just slower at getting away. There’s a reason the FGS is called a “zerg buster” “Thanks for GS! #DPS” he said heh.
because male casters are gross, its a class designed around a dress.
did the same thing in wow, human female priest. it just makes sense.
Hmm, I don’t know about you but my male elementalist doesn’t wear a dress, he wears a long coat over a pair of pants.
Does this look like a dress to you?
No offence, Zapp but your Asura looks more like a Shark than an Asura
, but the hair style is so funky
Here is mine. She is my little princess :::)
He’s not a shark, he’s clearly a gremlin.
Why would you want single attunement? The whole point behind the elementalist class IS attunement swapping, it’s why we don’t get a weapon swap.
If you’re seriously not swapping attunements, you’re just being lazy and missing out on a glut of benefits that swapping bestows, and missing out on the more interesting aspects of elementalist play, which is cross attunement combinations. Like Eruption + Lava Font, or Magnetic Grasp + Burning Speed + Fire Grab
Because some people enjoy the fantasy of playing a Fire Mage or a Lightning Wizard. Specialization can be fun, just like versatility can be fun. Please don’t slander this desire as it’s perfectly legitimate. Everyone is allowed to have fun in different ways.
There’s a game where you can do that, it’s called Guild Wars.
In GW2, elementalist is a different kind of class, attunement swapping is literally the core of the class, asking them to somehow reward single attunement builds is asking them to completely scrap elementalist as a class and start over, it shouldn’t happen, as it is it’d get extremely boring only having 5 weapon skills period since you can’t swap weapons and since you aren’t swapping attunement.
Why would you want single attunement? The whole point behind the elementalist class IS attunement swapping, it’s why we don’t get a weapon swap.
If you’re seriously not swapping attunements, you’re just being lazy and missing out on a glut of benefits that swapping bestows, and missing out on the more interesting aspects of elementalist play, which is cross attunement combinations. Like Eruption + Lava Font, or Magnetic Grasp + Burning Speed + Fire Grab
The cooldown complaint should apply to every bloody skill in the game. The longest cooldowns on the most powerful skills should be 30 seconds, TOPS. Balance skill effect/damage around low cooldown, and we’d have a much more reactive game.
On the same note, our weapon skills (ele specific here) should have cast time, or animation delays, but not both. Also tweaking aftercast animation times to be shorter would be nice.
I think that’s pushing it a bit, utility skill cooldowns need to be compared to other utility skill cooldowns, which is what I did.
I’m not there yet on this build as I don’t have the rings and I have a soldier’s amulet from before, but this is the goal.
An alternative would be to use 2 runes of water instead of a full set of altruism runes, for 15% extra boon duration, but it does come at the cost of you not having a real good means of getting yourself fury and being stuck at 21% to crit, as well as losing 65 healing power. Personally, I like the ability to get myself fury at about a 25% uptime.
Also the second water major trait is something I swap depending on what I need. I may swap it to the fall damage trait, or the cantrip cooldown reduction trait, or even at times, the water skill cooldown reduction trait.
Things I like about this build is it has high flat damage from power, with fury has great crit damage, has the ability to stack good amounts of might through setting up an eruption, swapping to fire attunement in combat, lava font, letting eruption go off and blast finishing it with arcane wave and then healing for 13 stacks of might, 9 of which are spread to those around you as well as fury. Great condition removal, and still manages to have some survivability with 2 stun breakers that are also escapes, and the escapes from fiery greatsword, along with moderate health and toughness.
Even with a 10 second cooldown I wouldn’t take that spell.
How about 20s (16s with glyph trait), and the storms create fields (including a second source of lightning field, currently, only available through static field), and sandstorm is a whirl finisher?
The damage is barely there, and easy to avoid. The long CD makes it a no-go.
Now if they lowered the CD to 15-30 secs, and made it a single huge explosion with interesting side effects (not just the burning, blindness, bleed and chill) of whatever element you choose, with higher burst damage of course, it would be interesting.
I like the storm effects as they are, I just think that the cooldown is extreme compared to what it does, especially when I can use a conjure frost bow and use frost storm TWICE in the time that I can use glyph of storms to cast it once, and that’s with traits to reduce glyph cooldown by 20%.
Conjure earth shield should also have a way to cast sandstorm. The current shield is well… I can’t really find a use for it. You can charge in, pull, and then…. autoattack. It’d be great if you could charge in, aoe pull, and then sandstorm on your location.
Honestly, all they need to do is make them kits like the Engie and I’d be good to go.
I’ve been saying this since day 1.
It’d be nice but way too powerful, you’d have to give up the ability to give someone else a second conjure weapon at the very least.
I like that I can give another person an extra conjure weapon, that’s part of the utility and power behind the skills is that you can use them as support.
They’d also have to get rid of the innate stats on the weapons (like Fiery Greatsword gives 140 power and 100 condition damage, on top of what you were already wielding for weapons). That’s again, at the very least. The weapons are powerful, so they do need limites. I just think the autoattacks aren’t powerful enough to warrant their cost.
again see, you’re turning off the autoattack to not waste charges.
The point is people turn off the 1 skill so they don’t waste charges, so anet should consider looking at removing or reducing the cost on the 1 skill.
Really the skill should have a 20s cooldown, modifiable to a 16s cooldown, 25s with 20s cooldown through trait tops.
Fire Storm has a cooldown of 15s on conjure fiery greatsword
Frost Storm has a cooldown of 20s on conjure frost
Lightning Storm has a cooldown of 20s on conjure lightning
Only sandstorm is unavailable through another means.
So why is Glyph of storms 3x as long as the cooldown for these skills used through other means?
I suppose lightning storm is noticably longer than the lightning hammer version, but without pulling out a stopwatch, I’m not seeing a big change in frost or fire storms
The bow is useful…. if you turn off the autoattack. The autoattack on it is a complete waste of charges. It has niche uses where you want some really good aoe, and the ability for a pretty nice stun on a boss if you can strip defiant off. But if you’re wasting charges on autoattack it gets burnt too fast.
The shield and axe I have never found a use for. Frankly the axe should just go byebye and the Fiery Greatsword should just be “Conjure Fire” instead.
For the shield, it needs a way to create sandstorm, just like every other conjured weapon (except axe which I could safely say could be removed and nobody would miss). You have this great charge, aoe pull, and then… what? You go invincible and do jack squat, maybe autoattack.
I’d redesign the shield to use the throw as a bouncing projectile as its autoattack (only way to be worth 1 charge per use), freeing up a skill slot. 1 would be a modified 2, 2 would be magnetic surge, 3 would be magnetic shield, 4 would be sandstorm, and 5 would be fortify.
This allows earth shield to have an auto actually worth the 1 charge cost, and a combo of 2 to rush into enemies, 3 to pull them in, 4 to actually do something to these people you caught in your pull, along with the autoattack bouncing between them, and 5 for survivability, and give 5 a reflect projectiles effect. There, now it’s a highly useful weapon like the hammer and greatsword.
For weapons in general, if it has a chained auto attack, make the cost 1 charge per chain rather than 1 per autoattack, like the greatsword has 1 charge per 4 fireballs, the hammer should be 1 charge per autoattack chain, the ice bow 1 charge per 4 bolts.. or, make frost volley the autoattack and find another #2 skill
but that would make hammer op but bow balanced so its weird
Edit: but hammer is only good conjure weapon i guess other then fgs ….
How about 1 charge per full combo? That’s the way it is for FGS It takes 4-5 swings of the #1 skill to deplete 1 charge of the FGS, which if that’s the ONLY skill you use, you’ll barely be able to consume the charges in 1 minute, obviously if you use other skills you’ll drain charges faster.
With bow and hammer and shield, you drain charges really fast using the autoattack. 3 charges per hammer chain, you can burn all the charges in under 15s.
Which is why people end up not using the autoattack with conjured weapons, resulting in less dps than if they’d just used their normal daggers, scepter, or staff.
Bow, Shield, and Axe should be free autoattack. Hammer and Greatsword cost 1 charge per full combo (basically thunderclap would cost 1, I suppose they could do the first 2 swings and switch targets for free use but they’re not getting the full use of the hammer that way)
the problem with conjured weapons is that the 1 skill drains charges from it.
Conjured weapons are dual limited, by both an ammunition resource, and time. So you end up spending a lot of time standing there doing nothing waiting for your 2-5 skills to come back up as those are better uses of your limited charges.
Making the 1 skill autoattack resource free would make conjure weapons very popular and powerful. That is literally all they have to do. They’re already powerful it’s just that people don’t want to waste charges so they just stand there waiting for the skills to recharge, whereas every other weapon they’d be autoattacking at the least.
they got more health now and 3 seconds of invulnerability. happy?
its not that hard to find a server and when people are asleep in there you know.
Like I said, the “empty” servers were filled with people with the exact same idea. Literally every zone had a few people in it waypointing from spawn to spawn.
and yes, I am happy with the change, now when I see a holoprojector it’s not a mad dash to get there first and nuke all the mobs faster than everyone else can nuke them so I can make sure I get credit and loot. Now even if someone else starts it I’m pretty sure I can get credit for everything (and they’ll get credit too), and if I start it I don’t feel like I’m screwing over everyone else around me into not getting credit.
It’s like with the giant jungle wurm event, it had such low health and died so fast that it could be hard to get credit for. Anet boosted its health and scaling and now everyone participating is pretty much guaranteed to get credit, because everyone has time to get in a dozen hits or so. Before if you started a meteor storm, it’d be dead before you finished casting and you might not get credit, that’s how fast it died.
and anet raised the health, based arenanet.
Isn’t Dragon Bash only up till the 17th?
BTW, Henge of Denravi, Fields of Ruin, there were still about a half dozen people racing to do these. Only reason this was doable here was because they were so close to each other that loading times from waypointing don’t matter, you just run.
Or maybe instead of suggesting workarounds that involve playing at 4am in the morning and guesting to low population servers (which other people do have those ideas as well you know, I know everywhere I went there was someone with the same idea who loaded faster than me), anet could simply give the enemies more health, and stop promoting players fighting with each other in PVE, like, supposedly the manifesto claimed they wanted to do.
This kind of content and the pinatas.. people are racing each other to screw each other over. That’s not jolly cooperation, that’s not what the spirit of this game was supposed to be about.
ok so there is a fairly easy fix to your problem, first dont play in a heavy populated zone. If you check the wiki you will see that there are tons of zones that dont get as much traffic.
second this is what my buddy and I did, find a location that has a few fast and easy to reach holo projectors. We found an area that had about 6 projectors that we could circle in about 4min depending on when the holos poped up. The Holo’s from what I can tell have about a 6 – 7 min recharge give or take 2 min. We would start at one holo wait for it to pop, then go to the next and so on. Most the time we were able to hit 4 holo’s each run. Then we would run back to the start and do it all again. Doing that I was able to almost finish my holo kills in less than 3 hours. I also was able to get a full stack of taffy I need and more than enough dragon coffers that I started selling them to make a little extra profit.I know in HoD Snowdens Drift and Lornar’s Pass is almost always empty. just find an empy zone, here is a tip dont waypoint. run to them, you will save a ton of money.
Too many people have the same idea. I was on HoD and Ferguson’s Crossing, in Lornar’s Pass and Snowden’s Drift. Guess what was happening? 1-2 people would waypoint in and kill the spawn near instantly, every single spawn. Going on foot ? they’d be dead long before you even came close. Waypointing? You’d see them dying as they came into view range.
In fact, the best luck I’ve had is NOT guesting onto a “less populated server” and camping 1-2 spawns. That means I get 1-2 spawns worth every 8 minutes vs the people waypointing around and getting a spawn’s worth every 15s.
doesn’t even have to be warriors.. anyone can blow that low level of mobs up in an instant. If you’re not the fastest load time person in the area, you’re wasting silver trying to waypoint around to find them.
Since they’re all in low level areas, they get blown up really fast, just a few autoattacks for some classes. I’m finding that by the time I waypoint over, use swiftness to run to the projector, someone else has killed it, time after time again, my loading screens are a bit long, so but basically you have 5 seconds to kill all the mobs once the projector gets popped.
Can their health be increased or some other solution be found out (yes I know, get a better computer, whatever) so that people can actually get credit for these things?
(edited by Devildoc.6721)
well I may barely be able to do that. I leave on the 5th, and will probably be driving home on the 8th or 9th.
Ouch, the instigators and sweet buffs are really the only reasons to come to Southsun, I hate Karka (I mean really, do they have to skeet on you with multiple projectiles that still manage to hit you after dodging half of them?)
Well the canach and subdirector NULL instances might go, but the Karka Queen could be a zone meta event that’s permanent.. but I wonder about the instigator events and the settler/consortium support buffs. Has there been any official word?
so a lot of these new additions to southsun will be permanent?
I may need to be leaving for a funeral on the 5th.. will the Karka queen still be going on a few more days or am I probably just gonna have to miss this one?