Guild Wars 2

Forums ate my last post due to the thread being moved to suggestions, never to be seen again.

Basically, I want to suggest a major overhaul to burning, which changes how it stacks and gives the idea of fire flaring up and dying out over time.

- Burning now stacks in intensity according to the total burning damage added by players. The stack tracks the current damage of the burn. The damage reduces by some amount per second, e.g. 1 per level of the victim (80 per second at level 80)
- Duration is removed entirely and replaced by the burn dying out over time.
- Burns have their base damage scaled based on the duration they had before; a 1 second burn would have a base damage of 80, a 10 second burn would have a base damage of 800. Some may need a reduction to help balance it (and stop it from ramping too quickly)
- Condition damage is used as a multiplier to base damage instead of an addition; this is to keep the effect of condition damage on duration as equal between a 1 second burn or a 10 second burn
- Add some cap on burn damage per unique player contributing to the burn, so burn stacks can cap out somewhere at the same level as bleed stacks solo, and get higher in group situations. Damage per second may need to reduce at an increased rate above certain thresholds to make sure this doesn’t lead to parties of one condition player and 4 guardians allowing the 1 condition player to effective reach 15k DPS – ideally one player should at most be able to maintain an amount of burning somewhere around the cap for a single contributor.
- All contributors to the stack receive credit for the damage they add to the stack as if it was direct damage, calculated to include the amount of duration that damage adds to the stack. This way, multiple contributors receive appropriate credit for loot/events.

End result: Burning as a condition is initially weaker, ramps up, doesn’t truly suffer from the condition cap in group scenarios. Guardians get an effective condition build which works better in groups (Virtue of Justice active ability) seeing as ANet are pushing for guardians to have condition damage when they only have access to burning.

Avatara.1042:

50% crit makes 15% proc rate. And please stop pretending you drop Flame Axes and Fiery Greatswords on people for 3 seconds of burn…

The new Necromancy grandmaster trait does it the right way: 100% chance to trigger a 4 second burn on a crit, with a 10 second cooldown.

I, uh, don’t use those in a condi build. Signet of fire + burning fire + 80% condition duration = 100% burning uptime on a single target; burning precision extends the burning allowing to keep the signet up for the passive effect if the enemy survives til the cooldown finishes. Signet passive increases crit rate, helping trigger Sigil of Earth for more bleeds.

The new necromancer trait requires 150% condition/burning duration for the necro to get 100% uptime (and that assumes crits exactly when you need them). At 50% crit, attacking 15 times in 10 seconds (stone shards * 5 attacks), ele will proc around 2.5 burns from burning precision, which has no internal cooldown – but ele has burning from other sources as well. Burning Fire helps cover that purely from Signet of Fire, and helps a lot with Cleansing Fire.

Also, if the necro trait’s ICD is for the trait as a whole, it won’t help for AoE if you place a mark on 5 enemies and get a single crit, putting the trait on cooldown for 10 seconds. Dhuumfire is not enough. The same trait on engi works because they burn already.

Avatara.1042:

Burning Precision is absolutely horrid. Anyone who can do basic maths can see that. It lasts only ONE second, and only triggers on 30% of your critical hits. So first you have to roll a crit, then you have a 30% chance of it triggering a measly 1 second burn.

A condition build with 20% crit will trigger it 3 out of every 50 attacks. That is a 6% proc rate, for a single second of burn….

I’m running full rabid, 50% crit rate; that’s a 16.6% trigger rate on burning, with stone shards hitting 3 times every 2 seconds.

The extra burning is supplemental to the burning applied by the utilities affected by Burning Fire. I’m at 80% condition duration in PvE, making it add 1.8 seconds of burning to the stack each time it triggers, with signet of fire providing a large mass of uptime. Burning Precision gives me more time with the signet on passive mode before I need to fire it again.

Names aside, Burning Fire and Burning Precision are both useful in mono-earth condition builds, which are already getting a boost in the update. They’re far from useless when built around properly, as they can help condition builds get a decent amount of burning uptime without leaving earth attunement (leaving earth attunement can cause a large drop off in bleed stacks, essentially reducing damage output far more than gaining burning from entering fire attunement could increase it, so condition builds need to get burning while staying in earth)

Flame Barrier and One With Fire are both terrible traits right now, I’ll agree with that.

Mirta.5029:

you’re talking about weapon sigils as if they’re not accessible to thieves. I didn’t see warriors dealing burning damage though, so I would ask which skill on a weapon or which trait is it that does it?
Also when talking about thieves doing condition damage – they have access to bleeds, poisons and vulnerability without using sigils. Necros have similar access (except that they also have chills and so), so then how come it is the thief that lacks conditions?

I never mentioned that thieves don’t have access to weapon sigils – I simply stated that because of Fast Hands, warriors can afford to only have weapon swap sigils on one weapon set.

Thieves can do something similar by having 2 of the same weapon set due to how their initiative system works, but they already have access to poison… and there isn’t a sigil which procs burning on weapon swap. (Sidenote: I actually think thieves should get a comparable condition build to warriors eventually – it’s kinda weird they’re one of the only professions without either bleed or burn on crit, for example, the only other being guardian)

At this point in time, warriors probably have better (damaging) condition access than any other profession except engi, but 1) it’s kinda pointless in PvE because zerkzerkzerk, and 2) it relies too heavily on melee range compared to other condition builds for PvP.

The leaked upcoming notes seem to suggest that condition warrior will be getting a major helping hand with that last part thanks to better cripple/immob access. We’ll see where it goes when that happens.

Movement speed bonuses don’t stack unless they specifically state they do. The Rune won’t stack with move speed bonuses from signets.

Lighter.5631:

because you can obviously get all those (significant)burn poison and bleeds with even one set of weapon as a CC weapon. And because they can`t obviously cleanse those conditions.

as long you don`t have a build ready, all you talking is just bs, because just throwing random conditions there will obviously help you win the argument.

Messed around with a build editor, made this

Things to note with the new update, assuming the leaked notes are correct:
We’re getting 8 seconds of 4*confusion when interrupting; this setup has 40% condition duration, so that’ll last for 11.2 seconds.
Stomp is becoming an instant-cast stun breaker that can also interrupt, and has a 45 second cooldown (36 in this build). Blowout is a very short duration stun, meaning our victim will be able to accidentally kill themselves sooner.
MH sword will cripple at the end of the auto chain, and with savage leap. With leg specialist, will also immobilize once per 10 seconds. The rest of the time, it’s applying bleeds via autoattacks, F1 and crits.
Shield’s purpose, naturally, is the stun on shield bash. This stun has a short duration, giving our opponent more time to use skills in after being confused. Mace could alternately be used to get the 50% crit from Unsuspecting Foe on either F1 skill.
Longbow’s purpose is to apply burning; it also has some bleeds and immobilize on Pin Down, and as we have a 5 second weapon swap, I’ve added a sigil of doom to it to add poison to our condition stack. This poison will last 7 seconds if not cleansed.
Condition removal still weak; could opt out of Leg Specialist, Unsuspecting Foe and Mobile Strikes to get Shield Master and the new Cleansing Ire (30/5/20/0/15)

Total available conditions:
Bleed (potential to cap if not cleansed – 2 every 1.5 seconds from auto chain, each lasting 12 seconds, is up to 16 stacks, with a 33% chance of an extra stack on crit, 8 short stacks available from F1 and 6 long-duration stacks from LB #5)
Burning (up to 100% uptime if not cleansed, reapplied up to twice per weapon rotation)
Cripple (up to 100% uptime if not cleansed, reapplied every 2 seconds with sword)
Immobilize (On-demand from sword F1, LB #5; 1.4 seconds every 10 seconds from leg specialist if taken)
Poison (one application at 7 seconds every 10 seconds)
Confusion (4 stacks for 11.2 seconds on interrupt, with 3 interrupts available on cooldowns of 36, 25 and 16 seconds; shield interrupt can be reduced further to 20 seconds; finally, replacing Shake it Off with Bull’s Charge could grant another interrupt, at the cost of condition removal/stun breaking)

Savage Leap gets an enemy into melee range; constant cripple and immobilize application keeps them there, and keeps the damaging condition stacks buried under other conditions. On switching to longbow, Stomp or Kick can push them away after using Fan of Fire; Pin Down can be used to immobilize them prior to switching back to Sword/Shield. If the enemy removes confusion, use another interrupt; eventually they’ll either have to accept the damage or not fight back for a short period.

With Cleansing Ire, Healing Surge may be a better condition removal skill than Mending, as you can burst to remove conditions, use Healing Surge to recharge adrenaline and heal, switch weapons and then burst again to remove 3 more conditions.

Rampage, of all things, may have a place in this build due to having several short cooldown interrupts in the skill set. However, I left Signet of Rage on for the usual Might/Fury, both of which increase damage output potential. Warrior’s Sprint largely leaves the swiftness unnecessary, though.

Whether this will work in sPvP… well, I like how it looks on paper, and I guess somebody could try it out once the update hits. It may also work in WvW to a degree, but currently there are builds floating around which essentially negate cripple/immobilize making the other conditions easier to remove, and this build may not have much of a place outside of 1v1 even with melee cleave, so not good for zerg situations. PvE wants something totally different, as confusion is nigh-useless there as can be interrupts.

What I personally expect the issue to be, for this specific case:

The invulnerable trigger may be based off of whether the enemy can possibly path to the player. The harpies are on floating platforms, disconnected from one another – they cannot possibly path to the player, and thus become invulnerable.

If that’s the case, then the invulnerable check should check if the player is in range of any of the mob’s attacks, not whether the mob can path to the player.

Canach in his instance had a similar issue; if you stood on the rock in the center of the room, because he couldn’t climb on top of it, he’d reset, even though the rock wasn’t large enough for the player to stay out of his melee range.

Skills have 2 (or in some cases 3) portions.

“Cast Time” is the time before the skill has any effect, usually represented by a thin cast bar on-screen.

“Channel Time” is the time during which the skill repeats effects, for certain skills. Is represented as a thick cast bar. Example for warrior: Hundred Blades.

“Aftercast” is the time after the skill completes in which you can’t activate another non-instant skill, e.g. that pause after an auto-attack chain completes before the next chain begins.

The cast time listed in skill descriptions is usually just cast time plus channel time, and doesn’t take aftercast into account (which leads to relying on the cast time for theorycrafting DPS or whatever giving innacurate results). Decreasing the aftercast on skills will reduce the time between skill activations, making the weapon feel faster without changing the length of the tell on each attack; a skill with a half second cast time will still be visible to opponents for the same half second before it hits, but the next attack will begin sooner.

These aftercast reductions on hammer skills may significantly improve hammer DPS in PvE, where enemy locations don’t change as often. In PvP, it means missing will be less punishing (and connecting is better than before, as opponents have less time to move before your next attack)

Just some thoughts on the change to the sword chain here:

It’s going to make sword-based condition builds more viable (in pvp scenarios mostly, though a slight bonus for pve due to faster chaining on the auto). I’m not totally sure on how much more viable, but here’s how combat is going to look for it:

1) Savage Leap, cripple opponent, immobilize with leg specialist
2) Auto chain – 2 bleeds, followed by a cripple
3) Repeat the above until something interesting is off cooldown (weapon swap to LB for burning, burst skill, whatever)

The constant addition of cripple means that victims will have a harder time removing the bleeds. Leg specialist adding in an extra immobilize every now and then will just stack more conditions on there to get in the way.

I believe the biggest complaint on warrior condition builds was not having consistent enough access to other conditions to protect the bleed/burning stacks, and not being able to keep the target in range. Nigh-permanent cripple with a hint of immobilize solves both of those complaints. Well, partially for the first, but it might be enough.

Also note that hamstring has a much faster cast time than final thrust, and will likely reduce the overall chain length to about 1.5 seconds, so adding in some condition/cripple duration will be enough to make the cripple effectively permanent if not removed. Add in Savage Leap as a gap closer, and perhaps Warrior’s Sprint as a permanent self move speed boost, and this may be a lot more dangerous now. Though there’s still the issue of the bleeds stacking fairly slowly.

Mclol.1436:

Ushio.7138:

Bountiful power is a pretty big nerf. Losing 5-7% constant damage is a large amount. If you don’t invest in water, it’s tough to survive any amount of firepower. BP mitigated some of the damage you lose by being forced to invest in a tree just to reach a necessary level of survivability.

The big one to me that nobody seems to be mentioning is the Glyph of Elemental Power stunbreaker. Not only is it a pretty poor choice of a skill to be a stunbreaker in the first place, it has a 1 1/4 second cast time. What good is that? By the time you break the stun, it’s already done what it needed to. So moving the stunbreaker there is pretty much taking one away from elementalist.

While I do agree that the bountiful power nerf will decrease the efficiency of the D/D ele x-x-x-30-30 builds, I think it’s mostly negligible and doesn’t detract from the ability to stay alive, which is the main purpose of going bunker, outlasting your opponent. If you want to do some serious damage, you’ll have to go and try out some new builds. And with the changes to the air traitline (Fresh Air sounds like an awesome trait) you will be able to do just that.

The glyph of elemental power sounds to me as the best glyph to put a stun breaker on. I’m pretty sure it will break stun first and then start casting the glyph itself. At least that would be the logical thing to do.

Overall I’m pretty excited about all the changes coming our way, it’s good they’re shaking up the whole meta all at once instead of releasing small patches all the time. At least like this people will have to figure out new builds and the meta will be rocky for quite some time.

As a general rule, all stun breakers need to be instant cast. If they’re not, two possibilities occur:

1) The stun break doesn’t work because you can only cast instant-cast spells while stunned.
2) The stun break happens when you activate the spell, meaning you could cancel the spell to get the stun break back after just 3 seconds.

The first makes the stun break pointless, the second breaks the game. GoEP is likely becoming instant cast.

If the leaked notes are correct:

There are only 7 nerfs out of the entire list. Those are:

Lightning Flash: Stun breaker removed (nerf). Cooldown reduced to 40s, damage increased 50% (both of the latter effects are actually a buff)
Cleansing Fire: Stun breaker removed (nerf). Cooldown reduced to 40s (buff)
Lightning Touch: Weakness duration reduced to 3 seconds
Bountiful Power: Damage increase per buff reduced to 1%
Stoning: Weakness duration reduced
Glyph of Elemental Power: Weakness duration reduced (nerf), now a stun breaker (buff)
Electrocute: Cooldown increased to 12s (nerf), damage increased 50%, now stacks vuln

Of these nerfs, I’ve bolded the ones that have any effect on standard D/D land combat. Electrocute affects almost any build as no elementalist can avoid using trident.

The nerfed cantrips are both getting buffs in other areas to compensate, and literally every other item on the ele changelist is a buff. Mostly to staff, which is underplayed in pvp and in need of a buff.

D/D will still work. You have one less cantrip stun breaker and two less options for stun breakers in the first two slots, but if you want a third stun breaker, ele still has just as many as before, and air 10 being a standard means you can have the cooldown trait on the Glyph by default – and as the cooldown on it hasn’t been increased, that would make it a 36 second cooldown stun breaker, faster than any already run by D/D, while also providing your choice of conditions on attacks. Or you could use the signet of air and get a 30s stun breaker. Whatever. If you don’t actually need the stun break, lightning flash/cleansing fire will still both proc regen and vigor in a cantrips build, and more often too.

This is far from the end of the world, and the buffs that don’t affect D/D bunker look like a step in the right direction for any staff user, as well as condition and burst builds.

Edit: just to clarify, everything I’ve said is dependent on the leak being correct. We won’t know for certain until the patch, no matter how realistic it seems right now.

If the leaked notes are correct, Torment doesn’t seem that scary numerically. Thieves, mesmers and necromancers each have a single source of Torment; mesmer and thief can hit 3 stacks (thief’s is on a venom and can be traited to 4 stacks, or 3 stacks per party member, or both with two grandmaster traits) and necromancer’s is… well, indeterminate as to how many stacks it inflicts total.

The damage is 75% of a bleed stack per torment stack, doubled if the victim is moving. So mesmers can put out at best 4.5 bleed stacks worth of damage, 2.25 if the target doesn’t move. Thieves can put out a little more if they trait for it. And like any condition, torment is subject to removal.

I dislike that weakness on skills is being globally reduced in duration in all modes – the change to affecting crits doesn’t really affect mobs, just players. And if mob weakness duration to players isn’t reduced in PvE, then mobs are potentially getting stronger as a result.

Asura dodge-jump, backwards. Backflip through all the things.

Tanith.5264:

They don’t just carry mail, ya know. They carry levels. Next time you level a character watch one sail happily over your head as he drops your new level on you.

At least I think that’s a level…kinda messy.

Pretty sure that’s the mail you get automatically from “Your Herald” when you reach levels which unlock new story dungeons. Never seen a mail bird at levels without that.

Many guilds use commander tags to create a rally point for guild missions, especially ones which start some distance away from waypoints/bounty targets; some also use squad chat to fine tune the command chain (up to 5 commanders in a party together with the guild divided into squads, for example)

Sure, showing off in LA or at world bosses happens a lot, but when something can effectively be used as a tool for group content in PvE, it would be more appropriate to give people the option not to see it rather than take away the option of using it.

The forge can put out just about any equip that can randomly drop, plus crafted gear, plus a few pieces that are unique to the forge…

Anything that has a specific forge recipe isn’t on the random list, though. Precursors are on the random list.

Astral Projections.7320:

You didn’t happen to vender anything did you? It’s possible to sell things by accident.

The skin item doesn’t have a value, so that can’t be vendored.

If it’s transmuted then it’s another story.

The holograms are capable of interacting with the world around them; therefore it’s likely they’re produced by Moto’s Solid Hologram technology, which is diectly referenced on the super weapons as being the technology that makes them work.

As for why they’re blue? Maybe the portable version of the hologram projector can only produce blue holograms, same as the weapons (with the non-blue part of the weapon being the projector itself), whilst the full size super adventure box machine contains all the parts necessary to create all colours.

There’s a smoke field in earth attunement underwater. It may be more in-theme to consider a dust cloud as a smoke field in earth attunement on land as well.

I also don’t see it being in character for fire attunement’s general mechanics (DPS and burning)

That’s just my opinion, though.

Completing an achievement means to get every single tier of it. Of those achievements, you’ve only maxed out Meet the Hosts.

emikochan.8504:

Conncept.7638:

cesmode.4257:

Conncept.7638:

They’re RNG dependent because ANet has become greedy beyond belief.

And they’re account bound because every time they add limited edition weapons that can be sold, the majority end up being hoarded and sold for ridiculous amounts of money long after the event, and it does serious damage to the economy.

Like SAB weapon skins..

38 gold for that greatsword. pft.

SAB skins are not limited edition, the SAB instance will be back, with all existing skins and content as well as new additions.

hmm they said the skins wouldn’t be coming back, that it’d be a new set. I wonder if they changed their minds ^^

They haven’t said anything to the contrary since then, only that anything they say is subject to the possibility of change – this is one thing I really doubt they’ll change, though. Too many people have invested in the skins because of this.

If you’re running a standard 0/X/X/30/30 build, just switching to air and casting the glyph of elemental harmony in air will give about 90% swiftness uptime.

If you have even 10 points in Arcana with Arcana V this will still give about 70% swiftness. Dagger offhand can add Updraft, and Staff can add Windborne Speed. If you run Inscription (Air VIII) you double the swiftness uptime from the glyph to again bring it to 100% uptime (and if you’re using other glyphs in air, they’ll give swiftness as well). Zephyr’s Boon helps too, especially if you can abuse leap finishers in combo fields.

If you really can’t work out a rotation for 100% swiftness for your build, just use Signet of Air. It’s not that much slower and the active effect isn’t terrible for the cooldown.

Signet of Air || 200 second cooldown || 30 skill points

Passive: Grants a 250% increase in movement speed
Active: Blind your target and nearby foes (50s), radius: 2400, range: 12000, damage: 1220

Everybody else is just moving too slow.

The new weapon skins will be in two different RNG boxes:

Dragon Coffers will drop from certain events during the festival. These will contain weapon tickets at a rate which ANet have labelled “rarely”.

Rich Dragon Coffers will likely be the gem store version. The drop rate on these isn’t specified , but in comparison the Dragon Coffers dropping in PvE have a low drop rate.

(Link to the preview so you can see for yourself)

What they appear to have done is increased the drop rate on the gem store version of the item and made a separate version with lower drop rates available without gems. By separating it into two versions they can have drop rates appropriate to people who are gaining the RNG boxes without gems, and for those with gems. Hopefully the drop rate is high enough to feel consistent in the gem store version. (It can be implied as 100% from that preview, but can also be implied as being a chance… it’s probably a chance.)

Certain mesmer projectiles have “Create a clone of yourself” as an on-hit effect. Namely, the third hit of the scepter’s auto-attack (and greatsword #2, but that can’t be reflected…)

If you reflect them and they hit something, then the projectile counts as yours, so it’ll make a clone of you to attack them.

It’s similar to how reflecting a thief’s scorpion wire will pull them to you.

The entire burst happens as fast as the keys can be pressed; you don’t have 1 second, you have as much time as it takes somebody to press 6 keys, and only the first 2 have to be in a specific order.

I’m sure if somebody really wanted to dedicate themselves to this burst they’d set up their input so they just have to slide their hand down 6 keys, which can be done potentially faster than the victim’s connection will even register the first input. There really isn’t a warning, and the person playing it could try and bait out dodges using fire skills beforehand.

Did some quick tests in Heart of the Mists, here’s my damage output with 62% crit damage and 2k power:

http://imgur.com/dNj2J0y

Interestingly, Arcane Blast does more damage than Arcane Wave, even though the tooltip for Arcane Wave ay it deals nearly double the damage. Arcane Wave also does less damage than Lightning Strike (when it should be doing about 40% more). The net total of Arcane Wave and Arcane Blast is still similar to my previous calculations. This is… however, probably due to Bolt to the Heart. In a real-world situation the burst is still likely to push somebody below 33% at the same time.

In this combat log:
Sum of damage that can crit: 9854
Factor in the increased damage from my previous build: 12643
Factor in increased power (roughly +20%): 15171

Sum of non-critting damage: 717
Factor in power: 860

Final total damage in a WvW scenario: 16031 (before other stuff)

Comes out a little lower than my previous calculations, but it’s noted on the wiki that the tooltip values for Arcane Wave and Arcane Blast are higher than the real value.

I think this burst is a little too weak for sPvP – it’ll only gib Glass Cannons, and even then probably only GC thieves, guards and eles. Having a very high cooldown between bursts means it’s relying of the otherwise hard-to-hit-with scepter skills for a while afterwards. However, the WvW numbers are relatively decent, remembering that the damage could be increased up to 33% simply from opponents that aren’t running toughness, and it’s not factoring in bloodlust, might, etc. It should be able to hit 12-15 might stacks from blast finishers if it wants, though that would telegraph the burst a lot more.

I’d take a new class over a new race if I could only pick one of those options.

New class = new gameplay = more interesting to play, as, with or against.

A new race brings in new flavour to the game. Some people might like that, but it doesn’t fundamentally change how the game is played.

oZii.2864:

That is a full zerker build lightning blaze dude said its not glass. Which depends on his definition of not glass as a ele.

Because it doesn’t actually rely on precision (which is just a backup during the time in which arcane power is down) it could actually run Valkyrie gear and at least have vitality.

The burst relies too much on huge cooldowns to really be useful for anything other than GC, though. If it fails it’s relying on the opponent not being able to just heal up again or kill it.

I’m calculating a base burst before crit of five hits (Lightning Strike, Electric Discharge, Arcane Wave, Arcane Blast, Ride the Lightning) totalling 5559 damage + sigil of air (can’t crit, roughly 83% chance of triggering during the burst). This is calculated against 2600 armor. All five hits crit – Arcane Power gives 100% crit for precisely that many hits.

Throw in crit damage. This build hits 122% crit damage, so we’ll go with a 2.72 multiplier.

5559 * 2.72 = 15120 (rounded down)

Throw in damage multipliers. There aren’t many, but 10% while attuned to air (already factored in by the build editor), sigil of force (already factored in the build editor) and 5% if the enemy is on fire (can be fixed assuming the target doesn’t react and cleanse within 1 second, thanks to Evasive Arcana fire dodge)

15120 * 1.05 =15876

Sigil of Air will add another 1028 damage or so if it procs, or 1187 if it triggers in air attunement while the target is on fire.

So final damage = 17063 (before 20% from bolt to the heart, might, bloodlust (pushes it 10% higher if the ele farms mob kills somewhere first, with max might+bloodlust the damage is up nearly 50%), vulnerability (of which we’ll get 1-3 stacks during the burst), the additional burning damage and direct damage from the dodge roll at the start, bonuses from other classes…)

That’s 17063 damage which happens almost as fast as the elementalist can hit 5 buttons. Apart from dodging at exactly the right moment when there’s almost no warning, there’s not much that can be done to survive it other than having high enough stats.

Interestingly, Ride the Lightning can be used in an instant-cast burst because it’s also instant-cast and has moderately high damage.

Numerically speaking, the only elementalists that’ll survive the base burst are ones wearing gear with both vitality and toughness, or happen to have protection up when the burst begins -and- have 12k or more base hp. Same goes for thieves and to a degree, guardians.

But it’ll never (except with high might+bloodlust) one-shot any warrior or necromancer with toughness gear. It might get them close, but they’ll have time to react. This kills the now-helpless berserker-elementalist-who-happens-to-be-in-melee-range.

With something like this (could work with Valk gear as well due to reliance on Arcane Power), scepter Air 2 could potentially crit at around 4.4k damage, or up to nearly 7k with might stacks. Arcane Power could be used to force the skill to crit, along with the two arcane damage spells the burst could go over 15k damage (more with Electric Discharge and Sigil of Air procs as well). It’s strong enough to have the potential to be a raw counter to bursty thiefs or cleric-bunker eles/guards, I guess (15k damage vs a bunker build with 14k hp and reliance on healing after damage… when this burst is quite literally at instant speed and can be used while stunned). Then again, if the player using it screws up, they’re probably dead. Also if they’re against more than one opponent.

Rotation: Start in fire, dodge towards the opponent to give them burning, cast Arcane Power, switch to Air, cast Lightning Strike, Arcane Blast, Arcane Wave, pray to god that Sigil of Air procs. The entire rotation could be over in less than a second (but thanks to arcane power, every single attack crits with 122% crit damage)

And if it fails, die or use RTL to (attempt) to run away.

Of course, not sure if anybody should ever play a build that only deals with a single enemy and only functions once every 45 seconds… in WvW of all places. But as a roaming build for gibbing people that simply don’t expect it? I guess it could happen.

No, there isn’t another way to get those accessories with karma.

They’re sold by vendors in WvW though – well, everything except the backpiece. Amulet is 88s + 150 badges, rings are 94s + 165 badges, accessories are 94s + 200 badges.

Instant attunement recharge is probably too powerful in bunker-ish builds. Consider that it would allow a player to quickly cycle starting from Fire, then Water-Earth-Water-Earth-Fire. It might be once a minute, but doubling up on the protection, regen, burst heal and condition removal is probably too much for bunker (which is already regularly getting hit with nerfbats due to having too much survivability)

Now, a signet that replaces the need for attunement recharge rate as a stat, that could be great for enabling builds that don’t have 30 arcana. I’d personally make the active something the elementalist doesn’t normally have access to, like Quickness, though.

GW2 has 2 major skill types: Reaction and Strategy.

Reaction is the ability to perform the best possible action in response to a change of events, with the correct timing. In GW2 this means things like dodging, healing and ccing at the right time, changing targets as the situation demands, etc.

Strategy is the ability to choose the appropriate gear, traits, skills etc. to prepare for an encounter, and learning the encounter’s mechanics. It’s the kind of skill that’s used before the fight even starts. Very often it’s done for you (read a guide on builds or a dungeon) or it’s unnecessary, so Reaction is more important overall.

In general, condition damage isn’t amazingly low; in a decently-made build, several classes can reach 3-4k damage per second from conditions alone in PvE (my elementalist can get up to 4k damage per second, 3.3k of which is full AoE, in a good situation and about 20% more with might stack support – this before direct damage)

Considering a condition build generally gets to keep a defensive stat, and generally focus less traits on raw damage compared to zerker builds, the damage output is pretty decent. It’s also pretty consistent thanks to ignoring armor – if there’s a mob that takes 50% damage from direct damage, condi players are still dealing 3-4k damage per second to it, which may end up being higher than a zerker player. (On the other hand, the dredge fractal’s final boss doesn’t take increased damage from conditions when superheated, and other bosses with similar stun-to-massively-increase-damage mechanics are the same)

In PvP condition damage is more easily negated than direct damage… and a lot of builds that should be weak to it due to not including vitality in gear stats just bring loads of removal (e.g. bunker ele/guard in Knight or Cleric gear has enough removal to completely shut down a condition build, even though theoretically having no vitality should make them exceptionally weak to conditions)

In PvE the main limitation on conditions is the stack limit. ArenaNet have actually acknowledged this is an issue that they’re working on, we just haven’t heard any details for the last couple months. Depending on the solution, it may end up making condition damage superior for some world bosses (several mega-bosses like the dragons apparently have crit immunity, which essentially reduces berserker gear to V/T-lacking Soldier gear); avoiding that may be part of the reason for the delay.

For warriors, crit does nothing to enhance survivability beyond increasing damage → increasing kill speed → reducing time spent in combat. So there’s more or less a definite Soldier > Knight for survivability. The difference is only about 10% or so in favour of Soldier, and as the bonus is mostly vit, there’s a slightly worse effective healing multiplier (in a long fight, Knight’s damage reduction combined with healing will make it better)

For damage output, it’s down to traits and crit damage. Knight’s adds less DPS than Soldier’s until you add those factors in; certain weapons benefit less from Knight’s than others. That said, the baseline for crit damage to make Knight better than Soldier is only about 10%, and even without any the trait Forceful Greatsword or on-crit sigils will outweigh it. If for some reason your build doesn’t support crits in any way, Soldier will be better DPS (by about 5%…). Else, Knight.

In the majority of cases, Knight will be better than Soldier, unless you’re going for some sort of tanky Mace or Hammer build without adding in any crit bonuses. Berserker will obviously always have the best DPS in any build except conditions (which is currently weaker than ’zerk in the majority of situations)

JustTrogdor.7892:

What’s it do now?

Same special animation, but with the regular crouching harvest position for the player character.

Monster skills more or less work the same as player skills. We just can’t see their cooldowns.

Some monster attacks don’t have cooldowns and won’t be affected by chill. However, the majority of special attacks used by monsters do have cooldowns, so chill will usually make a monster use more weak attacks between the heavy hits.

If you stand on the rock in the center of Canach’s little cave, he resets.

After he resets, the mines refuse to be converted to work against him…
Just something I noticed when doing it the second time.

Afya.5842:

I think the best way is to farm southsun with your alts. You can get Fang from the mobs there, and ecto from the $$ you generate. Crystal from leveling. You can achieve all these with your alts being upscaled to 80. The last you need to run a little fotm.

While upscaled, you still receive loot appropriate to your character’s real level. That means no T6 mats, no equipment above character level.

3 things:

1) The bleed output with the skills as-written is worse than any other elementalist weapon. Consider dagger (an 8 second stack every second, with a 12 second stack every 6 seconds), scepter (three 6 second stacks every 2 seconds), staff (six 12-second stacks every 6 seconds with earth CD traited). Yours has an 8 second stack every second, and if the “Rocking Blade” skill is too slow, due to the low duration of the bleeds it outputs it may not accelerate bleed stack ramping at all. So yours ramps up slower than scepter or dagger, and isn’t as AoE as staff (and staff can reach bleed cap without sigil of earth, where this would require it, and hence a build with crits being necessary, locking in a stat slot)

2) This doesn’t solve the core issue of condition elementalists: Bleed stacking outside of earth attunement is negligible to the point that your damage output will be reduced by a huge amount when leaving earth attunement. Without Arcana, you lose 15 seconds worth of bleeds by leaving earth attunement; with Arcana maxed you lose 9 seconds of bleeds. Burning is not enough to cover that damage drop-off (burning benefits less in terms of % damage than bleeding from the condition damage stat, and in a dedicated build is only worth 5 bleed stacks; leaving earth will lose any condi build 9 or more). A single skill in water that inflicts a single bleed once per attunement rotation which also relies on being hit during a block animation also won’t cover it.

3) Because of 2) above, it doesn’t really matter if you can “cover” your bleeds with new conditions by switching attunements. You’ve already lost the majority of them by leaving earth (when it comes to covering conditions, the other weapons already can – MH dagger has immobilize and cripple, staff has weakness, cripple and immobilize, scepter has a blind… and then there’s utility skills, which help a lot for adding on extra conditions which signets or glyph of elemental power or glyph of storms can be really good for)

That’s really the deal breaker for ever having a condition elementalist build that actually uses attunement swapping – unlike direct damage builds, that maintain 80-100% of their DPS when attunement swapping due to having more than one viable attunement for damage, condition builds ultimately lose around 70% of their damage when they leave earth, because once you leave earth, all those bleeds come off. A working condi weapon for elementalists needs to have two attunements that can maintain a similar number of bleeds if the player’s ever going to leave earth attunement, so that after switching out to a utility attunement the player can quickly switch back to an attunement that functions with their build.

Due to the wholce “ice is sharp and pointy” thing, water’s the prime attunement to add bleeds to, flavor-wise. But having a decent damage output is counter to how the attunement is supposed to function outside of underwater combat. Obviously fire’s not going to bleed things – it’s more likely to cauterize the wound if you somehow made fire sharp. Air could step away from the lightning theme and be more about cutting winds and such.

“Heal skill” only ever refers to the active effect of your #6 skill. I think mesmer’s heal mantra has a weird interaction with it, but apart from that, effects like that food trigger when the cast bar for your #6 skill finishes.

serialkicker.5274:

What makes you think they will “fix” the limitation? I wish they would tho…

A couple months back a dev mentioned in an interview that they didn’t think they were going to ever fix it.

There was uproar on the forums.

The next day, that same dev posted on the forums saying that the team had actually started working on fixing it that week, and he hadn’t been notified because he was travelling at the time.

We haven’t heard much since, though. I doubt it’s something they’d just forget (seeing how often it gets complained about), so maybe it’s taking some time to fine-tune the fix.

In PvE I’d say this build could work well for elementalists, providing 24 stacks of AoE bleeding from Eruption (1.75 sec cast time + 4.75 sec cooldown = 6.5 second cycle; add half a second for the player reaction time and it comes out to 7 second cycles. Add enough condition duration to take it to 28 second bleeds and it maintains 24 stacks by itself as long as it’s used on cooldown)

Also several stacks of bleeding from Glyph of Storms, one maintainable stack of bleeding from Shockwave, permanent single-target burning from Signet of Fire + potential AoE burning from Burning Precision, 80% uptime on poison from Radiation field. The bleed stacks should do around 130 damage each; *25 = 3250 DPS, burning deals 765 DPS, poison deals 259 DPS. Total before direct damage: 4274; there will also be a small amount of dps added via direct damage, but that’s more complicated to calculate.

Now, it’s pretty kitten ed squishy due to not being able to use all the healy stuff standard bunker eles carry, and the nature of Eruption mean if it’s soloing it’ll be in melee to ensure Eruption hits, but the damage wouldn’t be too shabby. Long ramp time, though – about 21 seconds to load every condition onto a mob. But the majority of the damage output isn’t down to chance, it’s down to connecting attacks. No relying on a % chance to proc from a % chance to crit.

There’s also a warrior build that I want to try out, but haven’t had the chance to gear up. That one may work fairly well too. However, a standard ’zerker warrior probably out-damages it, so it might not be too useful in comparison.

Ed: To clarify in the above ele build, I’m going purely for damage output, so I chose staff with carrion for maximising the direct damage output; Scepter/Focus is a lot more survivable thanks to focus skills/being able to properly benefit from Renewing Stamina but loses out on the damage aspect and AoE. Also I forgot to slot in Radiation Field on the warrior, but it’s definitely an option for it.

The pre-events for Fire Elemental in Thaumanova Reactor can’t start unless there are no other events running in the area. The “clean up chaotic materials” event always makes the escort pre-event available once finished, but can’t start unless there are no other events in the reactor (in this regard, every single event that runs in the area could be considered part of the pre-events for Fire Elemental, because it will never start if they’re left unfinished)

What happens to the stance utility set in this case?
Also, these are all variants of the same numbers, which is somewhat boring. At least the current burst skills have variety in how they work, even if some go unused because a couple traits heavily discourage them.

Personally:
F1: The current burst skills. Scale with adrenaline.
F2: Rank 1 burst skill. Always uses 1 bar.
F3: Rank 2 burst skill. Always uses 2 bars.
F4: Rank 3 burst skill. Always uses 3 bars.

Maybe make it more interesting by making one of the skills use the offhand weapon while using 2 weapons. The new burst skills could be combos of skills a weapon already has, for example one of the new burst skills for Greatsword could be Bladetrail → Rush while only putting the burst skill itself on cooldown.

PinCushion.7390:

Zelyhn.8069:

Glyph of elemental power is pretty much useless anyway (5s internal cd, yay!).

At least the cooldown is per-target, which makes the utility somewhat interesting. Still, a 25% chance to proc and an unavoidable 25% down time untraited (assuming you refresh the skill as soon as it comes off CD) and a five second internal cooldown is a few too many restrictions for one utility skill. It basically ensures it’ll never work when you actually want it to.

I know it’s not technically on-topic, but this is a pet peeve of mine. If they wanted to restrict the use of this utility they should have just decreased the proc chance rather than add arbitrarily stacked hurdles.

It’s been balanced assuming that your build complements it. If cast in earth, it causes 5 seconds of cripple; I have 90% condition duration (PvE), so that extends to 9.5 seconds. In a 1v1 situation I attack fast enough to proc it again reliably within 4.5 seconds of the ICD expiring, leading to more or less permanent cripple once the first proc goes through.

It’d take a specialized rune/sigil set and 30 points in fire to get close to 90% cripple duration in PvP (closest I could get was 70%) – so it really is something you need to build for if you want it. You can also reach 100% weakness uptime fairly easily (30 in fire is enough), but the base chill and burning on the glyph are too short to make reliable. Of course, these are still conditions and they can still be removed, but you’ll be reapplying them sometime in the next 8 seconds… the biggest weakness as far as pvp is concerned for the glyph is that making it work requires a build that can’t possibly have x/x/x/30/30. In my opinion, anyways.

In PvE, it works very well just because it’s also benefitting from my ele’s condition build. Nothing like a permanently crippled mob slowly bleeding out and burning to death while it can’t reach me.

ThiBash.5634:

Theoretically it should also double the effects of glyphs if you cast those while under the effects of 2 (or more) attunements.

Instead the reverse happens for some glyphs, which simply can’t decide which function to use and don’t do anything (Elemental Power does this, and possibly Renewal)

I run this. It’s entirely single-target and relies on a weapon type (giver’s) and food, so it doesn’t work in PvP

Ramps up to max bleed stacks in 12-16 seconds, can inflict burning with 100% uptime and if you’re an asura, poison with about 80% uptime. Defense comes entirely from the earth skills; damage drops off severely if you leave earth attunement.

Glyph and Radiation Field are optional, but Glyph offers perma-cripple, and Radiation Field offers the only poison it can really use.

Rotation: Use Glyph if you feel it’s necessary, Rock Barrier if necessary, Signet and Radiation Field on cooldown. The majority of damage comes from the earth auto-attack. Rock Barrier’s chain can extend the duration of poison if cast through Radiation Field (adds about 1.9 seconds of poison per hit)

Leaving Earth for any reason hurts it a lot. Rely on earth 4/5 for defense.