Guild Wars 2

AEFA.9035:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_Altruism

yeeee… with new healing skill. will this proc 4 times then?

Effects like that only trigger when the cast bar for the 6-slot skill completes, which would only happen once with Skelk Venom. Additionally, all effects that trigger on use of the healing skill have an internal cooldown because of engineer’s medkit, so even if it were possible to abuse Skelk Venom this way, you’d have to stop attacking while waiting for the ICD, which would be pretty counter-productive when trying to abuse an offensive effect.

Julie Yann.5379:

yeah, from what I understand, you get a base heal + every attack heals you for 3 secs. Depending on how good it heals at lvl80 it could prove to be very useful. I can definitely see zerg warriors using it. Since it is a stance it has 0 cast time, and you can trait for it.

Chatlinked in-game, it has a cast time of one second. It’s probably got a very telling animation, as well – I want to say it’s this but that character is pretty obviously wearing light or medium armor.

It’s a passive heal over time, but it doesn’t state the tick interval. It may be similar to Adrenal Health in that the ticks are spaced apart more than one second. I say this mainly because the numbers as presented when you chatlink this signet in-game are pretty insane.

Also, possibility that what we can see in-game with chatlinks isn’t the finalised form of the skill. The confirmation of what the skills do will come in a livestream tomorrow, and the numbers probably won’t be confirmed til the update releases.

Razor.6392:

why would they word it like that? I didn’t even read because of how awfully complicated it sounded.

Base recharge rate is: Recharge at a rate of 1 second per second. 16/1 = 16 seconds total to recharge.

+60% recharge rate is: Recharge at a rate of 1.6 seconds per second. 16/1.6 = 10 seconds total to recharge.

With the new max recharge rate of +30% and the new base of 13 seconds:

New base recharge rate: 1 second per second. 13/1 = 13 seconds to recharge.

+30% recharge rate: 1.3 seconds per second. 13/1.3 = 10 seconds to recharge.

As for why ArenaNet do that: Who knows. It’d look better and make more sense to users if the profession stat line said “Attunement Recharge Time -X seconds” instead.

Proven.2854:

Incurafy.6329:

Wolf.5816:

No one has seen the heal values or Cooldown times. No one has used them, how about we just take a few deep breaths for the next 6 days and relax. If it doesn’t work it will be changed.

Yes they have, it’s called datamining.

Huh? I saw the list on reddit. I don’t see any numbers.

Another thing to add to the rumored heals possibly or possibly not being the ones that make it to live, in the Edge of the Mists test currently a few NPCs have the Warrior stance heal. Whether this means Warrior will get an altered one or if it was scrapped completely and given to NPCs instead, who knows?

It’s not every number, but you can search the skills by name over at gw2db.com

Each skill’s cooldown and non-scaling skill info is there. Cast time isn’t present, and healing/damage values are likely incorrect and can’t even be correctly compared with other skills as some skills scale differently towards level 80, and co-efficients aren’t visible.

But for example, “Skelk Venom” as in the files is a venom with 5 charges (so +1 charge trait = 20% more healing, lifesteal trait procs 5-6 times), and “Arcane Brilliance” is listed with a blast finisher, so there is some new data that means something.

Honestly the formatting on some of the skills makes them feel unfinished and what’s there might not be their final form. The livestream on Friday will confirm whether we’ve found the right skills, and the release on Tuesday will confirm their numbers.

I’d like to point out that it’s possible the datamined heals are not necessarily the heals that are being released on the 10th, or that their implementation may have changed by the time they come out.

Let’s not go too crazy until the livestream on Friday where the devs are going to show us the new heals.

Yes, we’ve already been told that ascended armor will at the very least drop in fractals. Hopefully it’ll drop anywhere ascended gear already drops as well.

Redenaz.8631:

Catch: 2h weapons cost more than 1h weapons. While a pair of 1h weapons costing more than a 2h weapon isn’t entirely ideal, if you could wield a 1h weapon and get a full skill set with it, that’s the cheapest equipment option by quite a lot.

It’s not a make-or-break catch, but it’s something to think about.

Maybe an “empty hand” weapon to match the cost. You’d certainly need something there to hold infusion slots and bonus stats that you won’t get by single-wielding, so how about an item that represents that you’re using a one-handed weapon with two hands, and/or using your offhand for martial/brawling skills?

On the idea of commander progression:

Firstly, I agree with many other posters that having progression be directly related to a single game mode when commanders serve a purpose in two game modes is a bad idea. However, you could, perhaps, have a progression system that rewards commanders based on the mode they’re playing all the same.

Consider:

- Commander book unlocks a basic tag and several colours
- Completing events of specific types while commanding unlocks new tags. For example, completing PvE group events unlocks a tag that looks like the PvE event boss icon, attacking a specific objective a lot in WvW unlocks a tag based on the objective, and defending objectives unlocks a tag that looks like a shield
- Completing group or WvW assault/defend events while commanding in general also adds progression towards new colours and patterns for the base tag/commander-placed waypoints/new abilities or whatever.

The unlockable icons will confirm to other players that this commander is working towards specific event types, while the colour progression indicates a certain level of experience as a commander. Additionally, there’s progression uniquely available in PvE.

It’s not colour-blind friendly. I honestly can’t tell the difference between masterwork, rare or exotic, and I think fine/ascended/legendary could be a potential issue as well.

Needs some extra detail to make those sets more visually distinct. Like, say, alternating black marks along the top/bottom for fine/masterwork, and along the left/right for rare/ascended.

For everyone that’s late to the party: Renewing Stamina isn’t moving anymore, devs changed their mind on it. You’ll still be able to have both that and Elemental Attunement in one build.

FluffyFox.2756:

Devik.9852:

Karizee.8076:

You won’t lose anything. The change lets you acquire more.

http://i.imgur.com/w7cZQZn.jpg

Everyone keeps asking the same question. I don’t get why people cant read.. it doesn’t say they’re nurfing anything but instead as you said – you won’t lose anything.

… and I’m not sure if you read this thread. >.> I never claimed anything was getting nerfed, nor was I asking if anything was getting nerfed. I was asking if the OLD infusions were being changed – please refer to the screenshot I attached.

Devs have directly stated existing infusions aren’t changing.

Whether an infusion with +7 power and +6 agony resistance is unique to the dev server or included in tomorrow’s update, who knows. But the existing one isn’t changing, so it’d be a new one if it is reaching us.

Devildoc.6721:

SpyderArachnid.5619:

Devildoc.6721:

SpyderArachnid.5619:

Devildoc.6721:

SpyderArachnid.5619:

Nick.6972:

I don’t care about WPs or Keys.
Abaddon has/had a better story. Period.

So the Fall of Abaddon is a better story than a story we haven’t even seen yet? Glad you can read the future then. Tell me what else you know about in that crystal ball of yours.

Again, anyone with any critical thinking skill could tell you the story of Thaumanova reactor.

1. Inquest sabateurs
2. Some McGuffin plot device “Chaos Magic”
3. Reactor goes Chernobyl
4. Scarlet is revealed to be the mastermind

That’s really all there is to it.

GW2 NEEDS some more connections to GW1. The devs need to stop trying to make GW2 have absolutely nothing to do with its own lore history.

Yet that is all speculation, not facts. While the Fall of Abaddon is all facts, cause it is old lore that we already know about.

I get that you’re nostalgic and want GW2 to give you GW1 stuff. But you have to remember that GW2 is a new game set 250 years in the future of GW1 after the defeat of the Great Destroyer. This is a new time period. Why should we relive the past for no reason, instead of focusing on current issues now? GW2 needs to make it’s own lore now, instead of living in the past and dwelling on old lore.

We already know the facts about Thaumanova as well, you’re just hiding your head in the sand about it.

But we don’t know the facts. Your “opinions” and “speculation” is not facts. It is your own ideas as to what has happened. There is no solid evidence about Thaumanova yet. Thus the whole reason for finding out the mystery behind it.

I was right in that Thaumanova was going to be played as Inquest Saboteurs or stopping Inquest Saboteurs.

I’m betting I’ll be right on it being tied with Scarlet too.

Whatever McGuffin chaos magic/energy they pull out of their posteriors to explain the how literally does not matter. We already know it’s going to be a McGuffin.

For all we know we’re not playing as Inquest Sabotuers, we’re playing as Inquest Engineers trying to stop the reactor from going critical (and inevitably failing, because this is history)

No.

The old simple infusions will still exist for regular infusion slots. The new agony resistance infusions are not completely replacing the old system. Nothing has been confirmed on any new equips being able to be infused – on the contrary, devs have confirmed there are only going to be 3 available agony resistance infusion slots, 1 for each of the currently infuseable equipment slots.

Given the nature of agony resistance progression, armor’s going to add enough AR to allow 20 levels of progression by itself (up to 70) and at this release we’ll only be able to go up to 50. The 3 agony resistance slots we’re getting will be cheap enough to upgrade to +10 to make that viable, which between them would add another 10 levels of progression.

There’s no need for more infused gear for a long time to come.

Infused Rings and Backpieces will have the inherent +5 AR replaced with a new infusion slot. The new slot has a new type which only accepts the new upgradeable agony resistance infusions (omni infusions such as the simple versatile infusion are not confirmed to go into it, but it’s possible they might). In turn, old infusion slots won’t accept the new infusions, so you can only use them in the agony resist slot of infused rings/backpieces.

Rings/Backpieces infused before the update will get an automatic +5 infusion in that slot. Rings/Backpieces infused after the update will have it empty. The change does not affect the pre-existing infusion slots or the infusions in them – what’s in them won’t change, and what you can put in them won’t change.

The price of ecto may go up following the update, as more people will get into fractals and need their stack to infuse their backpieces. It follows that there’s a possibility this will make it more expensive after the patch to both infuse and then slot a +5 in a backpiece.

It may not happen as well. Like all speculation it’s ultimately a gamble, but I think it will at least be slightly cheaper to infuse before the update.

Friendly Fire: Mob attacks can damage other mobs. Player attacks can damage other players.

Extreme Conditioning: Condition damage multiplied by 5, direct damage halved. Applies to all mobs and players, except for Agony.

Toxic Environment: 10 seconds of toxic pollen are applied to all players every 10 seconds, as the condition from the tower of nightmares update.

Fafnir.5124:

hard cap on 50 will be agony one hitting you at every final boss fight

No, they’ve stated 55 AR will be enough to beat 50 (and 51 through 59) – AR requirements are scaling differently following the update.

The hard cap at 50 is simply that you won’t be able to start a fractal above 50. ANet have intentions to increase the hard cap later on.

Firstly, your entire account is set to your highest level, as the personal level is becoming accountbound.

Secondly, any accounts above level 30 will be reduced to level 30.

1. Probably, as the new infusions can only go in the new slot which only appears on infused trinkets. Versatile Simple Infusions will still be necessary for the other slots.

2. Probably not – the new infusions appear to be an entirely new type which only go in the agony infusion slot. The old +5’s are omni infusions which go in any slot, so they’re not equal to the new +5’s.

3. No hard limit, but the cost increases exponentially and it’s pretty certain there’ll be a point where increasing AR enough to progress in fractals could cost as much as a legendary.

4. Can’t confirm myself. Current implementation of upgrades would be that the item inside is overwritten. The cost of upgrading an infusion also includes thermocatalytic reagents… well, if you could upgrade just by dropping an equal infusion on the item the game would need new code just to handle that one instance that can happen with 3 equipment slots.

The method of upgrading AR infusions is stated to be by using Artificer, which likely means at a crafting station using raw items. Additionally, the current implementation of upgrades is that you can’t freely remove them from items to do this. I agree that this is a bad way for things to be – ideally you’d be able to drop a +6 infusion an an item that already has a +6 infusion, spend one reagent and the item’s infuson would upgrade to +7 as if upgraded via the artificer recipe.

There are claims of a datamined Upgrade Extractor, and above a certain threshold of infusion upgrades, it would be cheaper to use that than to craft a new one. Below that threshold, the assumption can be made you’d just have to destroy the old infusion because it’d be cheaper to craft a new one.

Arnath.2319:

I agree, however i am very disappointed in the lack of content this patch

One new fractal, that’s it.

This patch might just be the patch with the least amount of new content all year. This would have been the perfect time to add Ascended Armor at the very least.

It’s 3 new fractals (Thaumanova Reactor, Molten Facility, Aetherblade Retreat), 2 new boss fractals (Captain Mai Trin, Molten Berserker + Dredge Firestorm pair) and a story instance (thaumanova again). That’s probably more content than any living story to date, tbh.

Additionally, the new Mist Instability mechanic will add replay value to the fractals that already exist by messing with the gameplay.

Infusing a ring or backpiece in the Mystic Forge currently destroys all infusions in the item. Unless something changes with the way the mystic forge works, it will probably be the same for earrings and amulets.

Who knows if ANet will even bother to make it possible to infuse those trinkets for months to come though? Ascended Armor coming out is going to add +30 to our max AR unless it somehow doesn’t have infusion slots, and the agony slots in infused rings and backpieces scale forever. Just armor and +10 rings/backpieces would let us play to level 79 fractals.

The upgrade extractor, if it gets released at all, will probably happen long before we can infuse earrings and amulets.

You still get agony resistance from infusions in regular slots.

The new slot only holds the new, upgradeable infusions. but you’ll still have all your old slots with all their old infusions attached, and none of those infusions are being changed.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/fractured/Agony-changes/3228298

“New Infused Ascended Rings and Back Items will have an empty slot.”

Take it at your own pace though, a +5 AR infusion seems to be relatively cheap to craft.

ZodiaKeePer.6081:

phys.7689:

ring can be obtained with laurels or from fractals or from laurels and wvw honor badges

sword is crafted or found, crafting, just craft higher level things again and again to level it

I know how to obtain the ring, but my question is how to get those extra stats of 12 of everything in the bottom.

They’re automatically included in the main stats of the ring – in game it’ll just show + 44 to all stats, not + 32 and + 12. Only the + 5 agony resistance from the (Infused) tag isn’t part of the base ring. Infused rings drop from 20+ fractals and you can also upgrade the non-infused ring in the mystic forge.

Shockwave.1230:

Is diamond skin going to cleanse conditions, while having active conditions, and breaking the condition immunity threshold?

No player immunity in the game currently works that way, so I’d assume not.

The interaction I’m thinking of most is “does it make you immune to conditions if you’re over 90% health when the attack hits, or only if you’re over 90% health after the attack’s damage”. The latter makes it near completely worthless in any matchup that isn’t a condition build, as opposed to preventing a cripple or weakness at the start of a fight or something.

On Cleansing Wave:

Sure, it’s an AoE cleanse every 10 seconds. If you have full investment in Arcana.

Never mind all the drawbacks people have been mentioning, ANet appear to be treating it as if 30 arcana is a default for all builds.

Additionally, that “other classes don’t get AoE cleanse at adept tier” isn’t necessarily a problem. Some professions should get certain effects at a cheaper cost than others. Maybe this is one effect that the Elementalist can get cheaper than the others.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Although you have some valid points, they seem to be overly exaggerated in the most ideal scenarios you want to make out of it. No offense. Diamond Skin won’t be so much of an annoyance at the start of a battle to condi classes especially necros rather than a hard counter.

Do note that while the ele is busy healing himself for four freakin seconds, he’s not doing anything else and screams “Interrupt me while I frantically run around curved into a ball-shaped pose with flashes spouting all over my gorgeous body.”

Necro has no interrupts in a condition setup except fear. Which Diamond Skin makes ele immune to. What else can necro do? Chill to reduce cooldowns? Oh, wait. Poison to reduce ele’s healing? Oh, wait. Cripple to keep the ele within the 600 range needed for life blast to deal full damage? Oh, wait. The only option to do anything at all about the healing is run flesh golem, which has hard cc… that never really connects at range and has a huge wind-up time. Or maybe Lich Form with the one cc effect you better hope is enough to get you running. Of course, necromancers having virtually no mobility means the ele can just stun break and disengage til ER is recharged. Heck, the knockback even gives the ele a headstart on that, now that you can stunbreak whie being launched.

Even if the ele doesn’t deal any damage for whatever reason, the matchup is still just a stalemate. But the moment the necro runs out of death shroud/lich form, the ele has free reign to fight back with very little to fear.

Bone Minion’s self destruct might have enough damage to punch through, assuming the ele doesn’t have protection up. That’s about it. And if the necro’s not fast enough to launch their condition spike, the ele will be back over threshold within 1 or 2 seconds.

That’s about it. Necro needs to give up a utility or elite slot to get through it against a half-decent ele player. Screw up with Lich Form as your answer and you can’t even try again seriously for over 2 minutes. Bone Minions might work better, but they’re still avoidable. Flesh Golem can be targeted by the ele and removed.

And if in this situation the ele can’t win either, it just becomes incredibly boring.

Not to mention Diamond Skin is nigh useless against just about anything else, because it only lasts approximately 2 seconds against any direct damage build ever.

I don’t mind the idea of a conditional immunity to… well, conditions, but health thresholds shouldn’t be the variable the trait functions off. Tune the health threshold too low, some builds can never break through. Tune it too high, the trait is useless. I’ve mentioned before that it should probably function based on hits taken or conditions blocked and recharge over time. Every 5 seconds, gain a charge of Diamond Skin (max 5), which blocks a single condition. There. There’s no issue of condition builds entering a stalemate with it under any circumstances, unless they somehow can’t land a hit more than once every 5 seconds; yet the trait remains relevant through the entire fight by occasionally blocking a condition.

Taldren.7523:

Life blast hits for 1000+ even in full Rabid gear … Death Shroud -> (x2) Life Blast -> Tainted Shackles -> Doom

Ether Renewal is the easiest heal in the game to counter … and the most obvious being cast.

Lie Blast hits less than once per second, for 1000 damage per hit… against a healing skill that heals for 1250 per second. So for the first 4 seconds the ele could simply outheal it. The next hit they can reverse the damage by simply attuning to water or dodging while in water, depending on whether they’re running Diamond Skin with 15 water or 30 arcana. And they can avoid 2 more hits by dodging. If they’re running staff or focus, they can even projectile reflect the shots.

Life Blast, one of the most telegraphed and easily avoided skills on the Necromancer, in a build that won’t be getting a second chance at using it for another minute or so. And if it does somehow work, if the ele manages to get above 90% health again, you’ve lost your chance.

Levels in GW2 mainly split up content based on difficulty. It’s not always perfect, but for example Queensdale has easier content than Snowden Drifts, Blazeridge Steps has easier content than Mount Maelstrom, etc etc.

The idea is that levelling your character allows you access to content which is harder gameplay-wise, preventing you from jumping straight into hard content before you get used to playing your character.

There are issues, of course. You can easily get used to a character without levelling at all in PvP, and the difficulty variance in dungeons weirdly trends towards some of the lower level dungeons being amongst the hardest. AC, TA and CM all feel harder to me than HotW, CoE and CoF. The new Kessex Hills may be somewhat harder than some mid-game zones.

But the main idea is that levels are supposed to separate content based on difficulty. Whether the process of raising your level is too long or not is something else, but levels themselves have a purpose.

Taldren.7523:

Aomine.5012:

My only concern with diamond skin is that when pair with Ether Renewal, it can be too powerful against classes that rely on condition as their main source of damage.

Ether Renewal is already a very powerful healing skill that remove a total of 8 conditions every 15 seconds. When pair with diamond skin, it not only cleanse all the remaining condition on the ele, it also constantly heal ele so it can maintain above 90% hp when channeling, so a total of 4 seconds immunity to condition every 15 seconds.

This would be very unfair in 1 on 1 situation to necro and engineer who rely almost entirely on condition damage as their main source of damage.

Not a real concern. Every ability that necro has that adds conditions ALSO does damage. Even if they were pure condi it wouldn’t take them long to breach the threshold.

A pure condition necro has an auto-attack DPS of about 400 direct damage, after taking crits into consideration. Ether Renewal, at base, heals 1250 per second for the duration of the cast (and also clears off just about any conditions that are on the ele). It basically becomes a second mist form when against a condi necro, on a much shorter cooldown.

I’ve done the math earlier in this thread; assuming the threshold for breaking through diamond skin is 1500 hp, a pure condi necromancer takes 4-5 seconds to break through it without blowing high cooldown abilities (which is important, because if they use all their cooldowns to break through they have barely anything left to actually inflict serious conditions)

The elementalist just has to heal around 400 per second on average to stay immune in the long term, and if the necro breaks through momentarily the ele can just cast ether renewal to top back up and remove all of the conditions the necromancer managed to land during the window. 400 heal per second isn’t difficult; the ele might have access to regeneration, soothing mists, healing on weapon skills. The ele won’t be poisoned because Diamond Skin, so these all work at maximum efficiency. 210 heal per second from regen and soothing mists before considering any healing power already increases the necro’s time before inflicting any conditions to 8-10 seconds. Then there’s the possibility of protection, dodging, invulnerability.

It may be one case, but Diamond Skin easily presents a sheer wall that a tiny subset of builds can’t break through; mainly pure condition necromancer, possibly pure condition engineer (but I haven’t ran the numbers on engi direct damage in such a build). The mechanic for breaking it shouldn’t be damage dealt; at most the health threshold should be the point at which whatever mechanic is used to break it begins to recharge, if the health threshold even exists at all.

Ele survival is based around using a mix of just about everything other classes can do.

In damage reduction, we’ve got protection, but not heavy armor or aegis.
We’ve got blinds, but they’re spammable as compared to thief or guardian.
We’ve got mobility, but it’s not on the same level as thief, ranger or warrior.
We’ve got some avoidance in Vigor and Mist Form, but not as much avoidance as a mesmer can reach.
We’ve got condition removal, but it’s not perfect.
We’ve got healing, but it requires more effort than guardian.

Elementalists have access to just about every survival mechanism except stealth (though we’ve got a smoke field + combo finishers for underwater stealth, I guess). That’s what defines us the most – not that there’s one survival type that we’re best in, but that we have access to almost all of them.

Treborlavok.3504:

Hopefully they take some more of our suggestions!!

I’m glad they posted that, but them not saying anything about elemental attunement, cleansing wave, renewing stamina… Doesn’t mean that they’re not still going to move those to master tier… Unless we can get confirmation on more of the things we’ve discussed…?

You might’ve missed this:

“Arcane Resurrection is going up to master tier instead of Renewing Stamina.”

Doesn’t change anything for me (staff build), but yeah. You’ll still be able to pack EA and RS in one build with this.

I’m just hoping they’re going to get the go-ahead for keeping Cleansing Wave at adept, and the only reason it’s not listed is that they haven’t confirmed it.

oZii.2864:

That soothing Wave Redesign though! With cleansing water trait! Yes please.

You wont as forced to blow cantrips to wipe condis if you are taking light condition pressure. That is awesome!

Cleansing Water has an ICD in pvp. Not sure I’d want to have the procs tied to random chance of the opponent critting.

Elsewhere, it’s definitely viable, although mob crits are pretty few and far between except for mobs that grant themselves fury.

Eh, the current flow is that you’re likely to initiate combat with Savage Leap and cripple with that. You don’t need cripple at the start of the chain because the enemy should be crippled by the time it starts. The cripple at the end of the chain is just maintaining the initial Leap cripple to help keep your target in range.

The green isn’t dyeable, which is the main reason I’m not even going to consider these. Not sure on the spikes. You can preview multiple dyes from TP after previewing the chat codes to fill out the dye slots of the items.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Stuff

I guess we could take the idea of conjured weapon traits a little further, see what we can come up with. The Fire line has a lot of dud traits which could be removed for something else.

I’ll throw out a couple possibilities:

Speedy Conjures Master Tier, probably to replace One with Fire
Conjured weapons are instant cast. Reduce the cooldown of skills of your conjured weapons by 20%

This idea touches on something players have been asking for (instant conjured weapons) with something conjured weapons don’t have right now (a cooldown reduction on their skills. It’d help make conjure builds less predictable.

Conjured Affinity not sure which tier this could go in
Conjured weapons grant the wielder boons if the caster is in the matching attunement.
Fire: Might x5
Air: Fury
Water: Regeneration
Earth: Protection
The boon would be refreshed every 5 seconds, up to (5 seconds * boon duration) if they’re below that amount

This grants a bonus for using LH while in air, FGS while in fire, and so on. It brings some defensive capabilities into the fire line if the player is running Ice Bow or Earth Shield, and improves DPS to some degree for FGS, Flame Axe and LH. The boons affect allies that use your weapons, and the duration mechanic means you can switch attunements and maintain the effect for a few seconds, so the offensive buffs in fire/air aren’t totally overshadowed by the usual Piercing Shards trait in water. I have a feeling this would be top-end Master tier, possible Grandmaster.

Greater Conjuration Master tier
Conjured weapons have a larger impact radius and deal more damage when summoned. Increase the size, range and damage of conjured weapons.
20% impact radius and skill range increase. 10% increased damage when summoned and from conjured weapon skills

Simply put, make the conjured weapons larger and more powerful. Generic statistical buff, but you can at least make it fun by actually increasing the scale of the weapons

Fallout.1798:

Dingle.2743:

Dand.8231:

I already HATE the slow “pulse” speed of combustive shot. Once every 2 seconds is sorta slow. Now they want to change it to every 3 seconds?!

Alternatively, Rangers Barrage skill hits once every 0.6 seconds!

Please, Please, Please, speed UP the pulse to 1.5 or 1 second. DONT slow it down even more from 2 to 3!

I’m not even talking about increasing the DPS, that can be normalized and spread across the faster pulses.

Incidentally, ANet’s argument for slowing the pulses down is not the damage (stated to be normalised to the new pulse rate anyways, and the total burning duration is actually increased)

ANet’s argument is that the current pulse rate generates additional adrenaline too quickly, hence lowering the number of hits.

The new form has 2 seconds higher base burning duration total and the fire field will last 1 second longer at full adrenaline. Assuming the normalisation goes properly, it’s a buff to everything except the adrenaline gain rate.

You are assuming that the enemy players will stand in the fire field for the entire duration. And that will not happen. If the concern is that the current pulse rate generates too much adrenaline, then put a cap on the adrenaline gains. Make it so that instead of it calculating how many enemies it hits to add adrenaline, just be that if a pulse hits at least 1 enemy, generate 1 adrenaline. So 1 Combustive Shot pulse can only generate 1 adrenaline (provided it hits something). This way you solve the adrenaline generating problem and don’t weaken the skill heavily.
The skill has already been weakened by having the radius at adrenaline levels 1 and 2 smaller, making it that much more difficult to use. Please try cutting the adrenaline gain per pulse, rather than increasing its time between pulse rate or total duration.

I’ll bring out the entire quote here.

JonPeters.5630:

Longbow
A lot of thought went into the change to combustive shot. This skill was simply too effective at renewing itself. One of the drawbacks of the burst skills needs to be losing your adrenaline, but this skill was easily able to restore all of the adrenaline it lost. Rather than reduce the burn duration we reduced the # of attacks this skill creates because we felt it made it more counterable in PvP and less reliable in PvE as an adrenaline builder

The adrenaline issue is directed at PvE. However, also note that the lower hit rate is intended to make it easier to avoid in PvP as well.

The PvE adrenaline reduction is being counterbalanced by the added burning duration; WvW isn’t really affected because it’s likely still going to hit people in zerg v zerg. PvP is the most harshly affected, but that’s exactly what’s intended.

Taldren:

Note the theme carries through in all lines.

Water → Cantrips. There is only one water-themed cantrip.
Earth → Signets. There is only one earth-themed signet.
Arcana → Arcane.
Air → Glyphs.
That leaves Fire → Conjures, as far as traiting is concerned.

As to why, let’s look into them:
The water line is primarily filled with reactive defensive traits. Healing Ripple, Cleansing Wave, Healing Waters, Arcane Abatement, Stop Drop and Roll, Soothing Wave are all defensive effects that are triggered after you reach a situation where you need them. Cantrips, likewise, are defensive effects the player triggers on demand.

The earth line is primarily filled with passive defensive traits. The new Diamond Skin, Geomancer’s Freedom, Rock Solid, Elemental Shielding, Earth’s Embrace and Stone Flesh are all traits have a primary effect of providing an ability which prevents damage or an effect, usually passively. Signets, similarly, are also passive in nature.

Arcane and Glyph skills have the most overlap for which should go in a specific line; I’d argue if the theme of the Arcane skills wasn’t “non-elemental” effects related to them would be better placed in the air line. As it is, both glyphs and arcane skills provide utility, which is the primary goal of the Arcana line. Arcane skills also provide burst, whch is why I feel they’re better suited for air traits (air being the burst line) while glyph skills have utility based on the element they’re used in, which is primarily a feature of the Arcana line.

But the conjures, this is what it comes down to: They’re offensively-oriented utility skills, in an offensively-oriented line. Their use isn’t to provide utility, it’s to provide weapons and skills to defeat enemies, and that theme matches fire perfectly; far more than arcane or glyph skills could.

In essence, Arcane traits being in the Arcana line is the only place where the elemental theme of the skill set is what’s placed it in the line. Conjures, Signets and Cantrips have their traits in the lines they’re in because the gameplay theme of those trait lines match the gameplay theme of the utility set. Glyphs are in the line they’re in purely because Arcane skills already took their spot in the trait line that would most exemplify their gameplay.

Dand.8231:

I already HATE the slow “pulse” speed of combustive shot. Once every 2 seconds is sorta slow. Now they want to change it to every 3 seconds?!

Alternatively, Rangers Barrage skill hits once every 0.6 seconds!

Please, Please, Please, speed UP the pulse to 1.5 or 1 second. DONT slow it down even more from 2 to 3!

I’m not even talking about increasing the DPS, that can be normalized and spread across the faster pulses.

Incidentally, ANet’s argument for slowing the pulses down is not the damage (stated to be normalised to the new pulse rate anyways, and the total burning duration is actually increased)

ANet’s argument is that the current pulse rate generates additional adrenaline too quickly, hence lowering the number of hits.

The new form has 2 seconds higher base burning duration total and the fire field will last 1 second longer at full adrenaline. Assuming the normalisation goes properly, it’s a buff to everything except the adrenaline gain rate.

Vick.6805:

The primary difference that I see between the Elementalist’s damage modifying traits and other classes’ traits is that the Elementalist traits are impossible to maintain reliably.

Warrior example: Berserker’s Might…15% damage increase across the board for being limited on using the warrior’s burst skills. Also, the 15% buffs the burst skill itself when the warrior chooses to use it.

Elementalist example: As currently stands, Piercing Shards is one of two traits we have that even comes close by increasing damage by 20% vs vulnerable foes. In order to maintain vulnerability, we have to hit reliably with Ice Spike, stay in water attunement for Vapor Blade, or rely on Shatterstone. So, in short, we have to stay in water attunement to keep vulnerability applied. Other than that, we can just hope that our teammates are applying vulnerability, I guess. Solo, it’s highly unlikely.

The other trait is Bolt to the Heart, which increases damage by 20% when our enemy is at less than 33% health. This trait isn’t bad, but again, the Ele has to get the enemy down to 33% health for it to even impact the fight.

It would be really nice if some of our damage modifying traits were stackable and not dependent on one attunement and conditions we can’t reliably apply.

Nevermind that Piercing Shards is only active while attuned to water to begin with, so it’s only really useful for conjure builds. It’d be another story if it worked with Lingering Elements, but currently even with the fix that’s a no.

The sheer amount of backpieces we’ve been getting mandates that we get a skin locker similar to spvp/achievement unlocks before we start adding more. The one-time living story skins at the least should be added to the achievement panel.

ANet, however, don’t even respond to the skin locker suggestion which gets reposted by somebody almost every week.

JonPeters.5630:

I think this trait needs better wording. I hope you all understand why that trait would be wildly overpowered if it carried over everything particularly all 10% damage bonuses. You could simply slam through all attunements and then get 50% bonus damage. Similarly making other things work with this would requires those traits get lowered in the base case as well. I think this is a fine 15 point minor trait on its own and we can reword it and then discuss the merits of the other traits on their own.

To me, that is a better starting point for discussion than attempting to balance all of these effects with how they might work with a minor trait in Arcana.* That would predicate the entire profession around that trait which is not what we want out of our minor traits. *

Jon

If you’re worried about making the profession focused around it, make it a core feature instead, and maybe promote Elemental Attunement to that trait slot.

New profession stat line: Lingering Elements Duration. We have a base Lingering Elements of 1, +0.2 seconds per point in Arcana (Max 7 seconds, 4 seconds at 15 which is 1 less than currently). Have it work with all attunement-specific trait effects because you either have a short duration on them, or can’t spec into a large enough amount to make them overpowered.

Attunement Recharge Rate is removed from the stat line; either the effect of it is spread out to the Alacrity traits (each now reduces the matching attunement’s recharge to 10 seconds), or the base recharge is set to a flat 10 seconds.

6 out of 8 professions currently have “F1-F4 cooldown reduction” as their stat lines, and that’s… well, incredibly boring. This could be a chance to make the elementalist more unique.

The Game Slayer.7632:

mjharrison.3209:

JonPeters.5630:

Right now I am thinking 85% on diamond skin as high health eles could break this at 80% imo.

There is another alternative:
instead of 100% immunity go for something along the lines of:
75% condition duration reduction while above 75% health

Personally I’d still prefer to see GM traits be actives not passives, eg:
Reflect 1 condition on attuning to earth, earth attunement is recharged when afflicted by a condition when not in earth attunement, 6sec CD

The way the dev’s see this trait to be, it wouldnt begin to scratch to fit the role its supposed to be. This trait would be hard-countered by condi duration on the opposing side, rendering this useless for a DPS ele looking to be immune to blind/weakness/cripple/chill/immob. All it takes is a little counter- play on the enemies side. You really under-estimate the raw damage put out by a complete condi based build.

Necromancers have incredibly low direct damage on their condition weapons; without conditions they can average at best around 500 damage per second until they break through Diamond Skin, and that’s if they’re blowing all their cooldowns, meaning they won’t have much of a condition burst when they break through.

So with DS being 90%, we’re looking at the necro needing around 3 seconds of uninterrupted DPS on an ele with x/x/30/30/x and no vit on gear. Presumably the elementalist has defensive capabilities as well; all weapon sets possible have crowd control, staff and scepter/x have blind, the elementalist might have near-permanent regen (with no poison to bring it down because Diamond Skin!) and a source of protection. If the ele is not in water attunement they can heal 1.5k+ instantly if they drop below the line. Can’t forget dodges either; luckily for the necro in this matchup, projectile reflect doesn’t do much to him. Soothing Mists + Regeneration alone bring the necro’s effective DPS down to 290. We’re getting close to the point where the ele just needs one 1.5k heal every 5 seconds to stay immune to conditions, and that time is increased by 1 second every 10 by dodges. Protection gives the ele 7.5 seconds between heals, but it’s not necessarily permanent.

Heck, Ether Renewal renders the necromancer entirely pointless until the cast finishes, and that’s on a 15 second cooldown, so just that, regen and the free heal for attuning to water could probably wall off the Necro forever. Doubly so if the ele is running gear with any defensive stats at all.

It might be easy for some professions to break through Diamond Skin, but it’s pretty much a hard counter to the entire condition necromancer build at present. Using a utility slot for a minion is just about the only thing a condimancer can do to get enough DPS to break through, and that just makes the minions an ele’s prime target.

Immunity to conditions is a strong effect, and while it might have a place, the threshold shouldn’t be based on damage received. Maybe hits taken, or conditions blocked, with the trait recharging over time when above 90% health, but not purely “immune to conditions until X damage taken”.

I really want to suggest this variant:
Diamond Skin: Gain a stack of Diamond Skin every [x] seconds, up to a maximum of [y] stacks. Each stack prevents one condition from being applied to you, and is then removed.

This remains relevant throughout the entire fight, would be visible to opponents before they attack, has a degree of counterplay (don’t blow a big cooldown if you think the ele’s about to gain a stack or has one, use an auto-attack to remove it first), and can be broken through by all condition builds given enough time.

I’ve said this on Diamond Skin already, but it got buried. here goes again:

Instead of total immunity, make it a condition-specific aegis with some number of charges, that regenerates over time while above the health threshold. This makes it not 100% useless below the threshold, as you might have some charges left, and not an impassable wall above the threshold, as enough condition pressure can still break it.

Yes; this has been stated in dev posts leading up to the current patch. It will always be possible to unlock it for skill points.

Diamond Skin
This seems fun to play with, but not against. Some condition builds, primarily necromancers, have very little direct damage to break through it. Perhaps make it a stacking buff that provides immunity to 1 condition application per stack, which builds up while above the health threshold? That way a condition user could break through it eventually regardless of the direct damage they’re outputting.

Aquamancer’s Alacrity
If you really want to make this master tier, consider adding some bonus to the respective attunement. Many professions have weapon cooldown reduction traits which provide bonuses with the relevant weapons – the only exceptions are Thief, for obvious reasons, and elementalists (though arguably the one trait guardians have which does this isn’t very useful anyways). Similarly, do the same for the other attunement cooldown traits. I have, in the past, suggested making Lingering Elements Duration the profession stat for Arcana with some baseline attunement bonus built into the class, and putting the attunement recharge on the Alacrity traits.

Aquamancer’s Alacrity/Cleansing Wave moving to master tier
My staff build currently uses both of these, with the GM slot for Cleansing Water. The purpose of your change is to make it harder to get these effects by having a small investment in Water; however, it also makes it harder to work them into a build for players with a full investment in Water. Regardless, Cleansing Wave by itself isn’t strong enough to be a master tier trait – it was always the synergy with attunement recharge rate that made it as strong as it is; it requires investment elsewhere already as well.

The preview’s full of small changes to trait tiers, like ANet aren’t sure where they should be. I honestly want to suggest a new “transitional” trait tier: Traits which are unlocked at master tier (20 points), but can be slotted in adept tier trait slots. This could be used for cases where a trait’s too strong to be allowed at a 10 point investment, but players consider a master trait in the same line too necessary to give up for it.

Maybe EA should be broken down into traits for each of the other lines (and as a result, Fire/Air dodges would need to be buffed. They’re already fairly subpar, but it’s acceptable because the same trait is giving us the water/earth dodges.)

I don’t really have any ideas of what should replace it if that happened, though.

Warrior Healing Signet has come up a lot in this thread, so I’ll just go into it a little even though the proposed changes don’t do anything to it.

The issue with the signet that the play for it is boring. If the passive is better than the active, the active is never used. If the active is better than the passive, it becomes a boring “heal on demand but that’s it” skill. Currently, the passive is better; if you need to use the active it’s only buying you 2 or 3 seconds, which generally means if you need it you’re already going to lose.

If the active was better, you’d use it as soon as necessary, and then it’s probably on cooldown for the rest of the fight as enemy damage would likely outpace how often the skill recharges; leaving the passive active would reduce your heal over time in all cases where the full heal of the active could apply. If the enemy is not effectively lowering your health over time, then that’s another balance issue with the heal being too strong or the enemy’s build being too weak; ideally any opponent should at least be able to make progress and mandating the heal’s use on cooldown.

The source of this issue is that the passive and the active do essentially the same thing: heal the user, nothing more. Whichever effect is better is the one the player is going to prioritise.

The way to make healing signet interesting lies not in changing the numbers, but the effect. If the passive is better heal per second, the active needs to do something to make the player consider the trade-off. If the active is better heal per second, the passive needs something else to be worth keeping up.

As for what it can do that might be worth the trade… well, the obvious options are already taken. Mending removes conditions, Healing Surge grants adrenaline. What’s left?

- Grant a buff on use. Regeneration fits the idea of a healing skill… but it’s the same general effect as the passive. Maybe something unique, like “receive a % of the damage you deal as healing for 10 seconds”, where a skilled player could make better use of it.
- Offensive buffs aren’t going to fit the name of the skill, but you could add them via a trait’s effects (similar to how many other professions get traits that give bonuses upon using a signet). Play becomes “am I playing well enough to trade off some of my survivability to deal more damage?”.
- Protection is something warriors always ask for, maybe here could be useful, as protection’s value is variable and therefore gives the play of “will the protection reduce damage enough that it’s worth more than the heal over time”. Vigor could work for similar reasons.
- Make the heal an AoE effect, giving the warrior some use in defensive support. Play becomes “are my allies worth more than myself”
- Give it condition removal and completely change the secondary effect of Mending. Play becomes “give up some amount of healing per second to remove conditions”

Maybe there are more possible options. The important thing is that the signet’s active needs to do something more than a pure heal.