Guild Wars 2

Elementalists can probably get out of it:
- 20 fire for signet aura;
- 20 air for swiftness/ fury aura and +20% damage for 33% HP;
- 30 earth for protection aura, cantrip trait or signet cooldown trait, and written in stone;

With the buffed passives for signet of fire and signet of earth (third slot = fire cantrip for stun breaking and condition cleanse), a s/d build will be able to cast the signet’s burning early on, burst with a natural high critical chance and the help of immobilize, still have decent natural defense (buffed signet of earth, signet of restoration where the active effect can be used freely). With fury and fire’s signet, there’s no need for berzerker’s precision, which makes valkyrie’s optimal; but might go for berzeker nonetheless due to higher than normal toughness and several means to get protection. A D/D will be able to reap more benefits from auras, but s/d will hit like a truck with dragon’s tooth more reliably.

EDIT: You’ll get 75% change to critical hit for 50% more critical damage with this build with berzerker. You have a decent chance to instant kill with a well-timed immobilize + fire burst here. Of course, that’s in theory.

Navzar.2938:

“Passive signet stat increase cap changed to 180 from 90. Some actives will be changed.”
Possible coming of signet eles? XD

Signet auras have, what, the second best trait synergy after cantrips? The problem is the signets themselves (and the lack of a stunbreaker).

For some reason, I doubt ele’s actives will be changed. The devs seem focused more on warriors, thieves and rangers in this patch. That being said, some of the actives don’t make much sense mechanically, even if they combine well flavor-wise, like water’s and fire’s signet. If someone needs condition removal, why would they waste it for a low-duration chill? If someone needs critical damage, why would they waste it for burning? At the very least, for earth’s signet, you sacrifice your long-term defense for a chance to kill, and hopefully, with 180 toughness, it can become a decent skill to take and use.

(How much differences does 180 toughness do, anyway)?

All the changes mentioned in the SOTG make perfect sense.

Signet of Restoration is strong as it is.

Signet of fire giving twice the precision should actually be meaningful now. That would be, what, 8 or 9 extra critical chance? Signet of Earth should also become a more viable option to glass cannons who need the defense and the immobilize. Other than that, I don’t think any signet’s passive will change.

One of the cool things about RTL, is that it does NOT work like other leap/ escape skills. The fact that is not affected by slows makes it unique, and it fits with its flavor. I prefer the devs to balance RTL around what it is, instead of making it a copy paste of other skills from other professions.

kostbabis.8791:

A mechanic that carries over to all 3 game types and massively reduces effectiveness in areas that ar compltelly irrelevant like travelling through pve maps/wvw or whatever?
It feels so cheap .Just admit it is cheap so i can feel better :P

To be perfectly honest, Ride the Lightning feels… cheap when exploring through pve maps. :P But maybe that’s not the answer you were looking for, hehe. When you pick your staff, focus or, even, a different profession, doesn’t it feels so weird to NOT have RTL?

ThiBash.5634:

Another issue with this is that it hurst glass cannon elementalists way more than bunker builds because they don’t have the protection and regeneration to lessen that extra damage.

Actually, glass cannon elementalists will have the protection from elemental attunement, which is the elementalist’s best source of protection, and they can have vigor per critical and swiftness per aura. So the boons glass eles get kinda allow them to fight back this kind of warrior.

This won’t make bunker eles subpar. Also, eles have decent alternative (although similar) builds: they just aren’t used as much because the bunker build is the best. Just like with shatter mesmers, bunker guardians, etc. If you nerf those, other alternative builds would be good enough for meta.

Signet of Restoration is in an interesting situation. For now, it’s used almost exclusively for its passive effect. And I don’t think it’s unbalanced, I feel that it’s fine as it is. But it’s interesting to note that increasing its active healing or decreasing its cooldown would hardly buff it, lol. I wouldn’t mind a (very slightly) lesser passive for, say, 5s less cooldown. Just so eles can, you know, actually use its active effect more often. :P

All three healing skills are good for the elementalist. Honestly, we have some of the most balanced (when against each other) healing skills.

The mist form, rtl and cleansing water nerfs are fair, but keep in mind that they are just another step to tone down bunkers. Cleansing water will still be excellent to remove conditions passively, it just won’t burst cleanse them anymore. Mist Form will still be excellent to stop bursts and finish your foes, and if elementalists (both bunker and glass cannon) successfully use it with signet of restoration (which is rarely used for its active effect, at least from me), then I don’t think locking out skills will be overkill. Finally, RTL will still allow you to leap in and escape, it just won’t allow you to repeat that as frequently, nor make you a roaming tank.

I’m not worried about ele bunkers, and if the devs nerf elemental attunement’s protection someday, bunkers would still be good enough too. What I’m worried, though, is for other elementalist’s builds. Valkyrie s/d eles are decent, but the nerfs will also affect them mostly; auramancers are decent, but… the nerfs will also affect them mostly… :P Signet aura builds will get better after this update, though.

Chances are, outside of any unexpected change that might come this patch, bunker eles will still be the best build available for them, and things will keep that way until other weapons and traitlines are buffed.

KnattyDreads.1856:

I’m sorry you’re just wrong. Show me any of the top sPvP/tPvP players running condition mesmers, any of them.

This doesn’t means much. The top pvp players use the best builds available, but that does not means that the alternative builds all suck. There are many good builds that are not used, because there’s an OP alternative. In the case of Mesmers, top players use the shatter build because of how strong it is. Should the shatter mesmers get nerfed someday, how knows if alternative builds (phantasm, condition damage, etc) start being used?

Wvw confusion was balanced around pve mobs that attack once every 3-4 seconds. The fact that its pve version worked against players in pvp was not fair. That being said, I can understand that people would want to see the pvp version stronger, but it’s still a change that makes perfect sense.

Hey, topic creator, are you sure the confusion nerf isn’t only for wvw? Because confusion is broken there, and the devs did say that they would start splitting skills for wvw from this patch and on. My guess is that confusion will remain the same in pve, because it makes no sense otherwise.

ThiBash.5634:

You can’t ignore people’s concerns about boon hate builds on offensive boon users

Boons are very powerful in this game, and they need counters. Boon stripping is fine to remove one or two boons, but something had to be done about those professions that could generate several boons every few seconds. Besides, having more diversity for boon hate is a cool thing, because in this case, you are punishing them without removing their effects, which leads to different kind of fights than with boon stripping.

Also, boon hate worked perfectly fine in GW1. It was even stronger than what this upcomming patch suggest. In GW1, mesmers could burst by removing enchantments, and necromancers could deal damage each damage enchantments would be applied. Far stronger effects, but then again, that game had healers. And those effects were eprfectly fine at countering offensive elementalists and offensive dervishes, as much as they were fine against monks.

You could, say, use a cantrip for whatever purpose, and then switch to water (with elemental attunement trait) and, maybe, use glyph’s healing, and you would lose 2 or 3 conditions while getting back to full health and gaining plenty of regen/ vigor. 2 or 3 conditions at the same time can be pretty big, because it can nullify soem condition damage strategies. Now it’s 5 or even 10 seconds withour removing an extra condition or two, which can bea lot for stacks of bleeding, poison or burning.

The warrior’s changes are a step in the right direction, but honestly, they don’t seem to be as significant as the elementalist’s nerfs. The changes to mist form, ride the lightning and cleansing water are (in a fair way) harsh. Certainly, a warrior versus an elementalist will be a more interesting duel after the patch.

What I was worried, though, was the lack of changes to a Guardian’s bunker. They have been overkill this meta. But then I remembered that signet of might’s unblockable attacks are pretty much the guardian’s bane.

RTL’s nerf makes sense.

I do wish to know, however, if eles can expect any buffs for their underpowered stuff in this patch already. I want to experiment with new stuff. Well… I suppose their signets will get better, or at least their stat signets. And air storm from the hammer/ glyph, too, if I’m not wrong?

EDIT: Interestingly enough, signet of might will work against arcane shield, but not against mist form. Well, it makes sense for the later, but poor arcane shield, won’t be reliable enough.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

With new signet of Might, can I hit through invulnerability?

Probably won’t work against invu. and evade (dodging).

Bane.3127:

I don’t recall any dev making a thread regarding the two similar bird pets with different names or about the white raven not having the correct ammount of vitality.

That’s because no dev would ever spend their valuable time to create a thread solely about this.

JonPeters.5630:

I can assume (…), but you know what happens when you assume.

The irony here only makes Jon’s post all the better.

I’d say you should go forward and make this change. If people like the current look, they can simply get the blue Jellyfish. More diversity is better than unneeded redudancy.

The new one is prettier from the image alone, and if it has a “glowy” membrane, all the better.

Cantrips and Elemental Attunement are, currently, the two strongest things about an elementalist, IMO. Their healing capabilities are forgiving, but if their cantrips were worse, how good would bunker eles be? EA’s party-wide 5s protection each 9s is too much (meanwhile, its might on fire is kinda weak, devs should both nerf and buff it to make glass cannons not worse :P), and cantrips have the best traits and ALL OF THEM are stun-breakers.

In my opinion, the devs have made a mistake in making all cantrips the ele’s stunbreakers. This means that, in theory, a pure signet/ glyph/ conjure/ arcane build will be useless for a pvp ele, even if those utilities were strong enough to be viable (arcanes kinda are). Eles will always need to bring a cantrip with them, which is restricting.

The devs should, in my opinion, redesign cantrips, so that being stun breakers are no longer a rule for them. Take stun breaking out of the fire cantrip, rework some of the others to no longer be stun-breakers, and then add that effect into a signet (signet of air is the best candidate), a conjure (conjure shield desperately needs it to be a viable alternative to mist form), etc.

(Double-posting due to post restrictions).

2. The world is beautiful, but mathematical and mechanical. Where is the story and the lore behind it?

Seriously, when I explore beatiful places around Tyria, or intriguing places (mount maelstrom comes to mind), I’m always interested to know more about them, and to feel them, and how distinct they are from other places. It happens they usually aren’t, at all.

2.1) Exploring maps becomes a repetitive, mathematical grind very early, very fast. There’s no difficulty most of the time, there’s no interesting storytelling to break the pace, there’s no distinct rewards to break the pace, there’s no diversity to… guess what, break the pace. And we leave them out without knowing much more about those maps than when we first entered them.

2.2) Seriously, why does all events play the same? I can understand that you can only do so much with the system, but I feel that not enough was done. There are times where the devs have tried to express the world’s lore through their events, but first, events are clearly not enough for that, and second, most of the events seem like filler. Not that there’s a big problem with that, but they don’t exctly make the world more interesting, they are just there to keep players busy. I can understand, however, that’s it’s an impossible task to create so many events and keep them fresh. Fortunately, devs are compensating with new story mechanics, like the new living world concept, but there’s still much to evolve.

2.3) Meanwhile, the story in this game doesn’t even bothers to make us interested in the world. I remember when I first entered mount maelstrom, and wondered what the devs have reserved there for the players. After doing exactly the same thing I’ve done in all other maps, I was rather disappointed and tired of it. But then the story took me there. Interesting, I thought! Of course, the story only wanted to present a new character or two, hastily finish its plot arch, and move on. And the same can be said to many other locations in Tyria.

1. Removing the holy trinity is a cool idea in theory, but it’s not working… yet

GW1 had an healer, GW1 could have a tank in pve, but GW1 had a much higher diversity of roles than GW2 ever came close to be. Meanwhile, GW2’s roles can be simplified to this:

GW2’s pve roles: Being a zerker zerger;
GW2’s pvp roles: Being a burst roamer, a bunker or (lol) a portal/ time wrap mesmer. (Although some condition builds are decent now).

So, even though GW2 didn’t want to have a three-role setup (dps, healer, tank), it ended mostly with a one-role setup (pve berserker, unless you’re not skilled enough or have latency issues, and need an extra defense) or a two-role setup (for pvp). Although pvp seems to been getting better with more map diversity, and some nerfs and buffs, pve has too many mechanical or design problems that prevent role diversity in this game:

1.1) Investing on party support is not worth it, because the normal pve gaming experience never incentivates people to join in a party, except for the occasional champion and event. And, to make things more restricting, events are so easy and spammable, that you’re much better of aoe zerging everything with yor zerker equipment, than supporting other people. But, this is not even all: events don’t even reward party support, so whoever is unfortunate enough to focus on this role, is getting less loot from monsters, and has a chance to get a silver or bronze award for event completion as well. Finally, when this is usually worth it (when you know you will always have a party, like for dungeon content), you need to spend money warping to a city, spend more money resetting your traits, some more to come back, and finally, once the dungeon is completed, if you wish to do normal pve stuff, repeat the process.

1.2) Condition damage builds suffer a lot from stack capping. So ever though they’re viable for normal content (although not optimal, speed-wise), players are incentivated to not use them, because any other player who happens to have a condition build will fight each other against event/ champion/ dungeon bosses. Especially bad in open world, where you can’t choose whoever is participating in the event. Also, zerker zergers can usually loot steal you in events due to the speed of their killing power versus yours. Loot stealing, as we all know, is against anet’s philosophy, so it’s undoubtly a problem that needs to be fixed.

1.3) Crowd control and disruption are pointless against the bosses where it most matters, due to their anti-control buff. What else is there to say here? This alone renders useless many traits, utilities and even entire weapon sets for pve content.

1.4) Aoe and spash damage is king. You can make the highest bursts in this game with aoe (hundred blades, lightning hammer, guardian’s GS, etc). You can farm events far more effectively by spamming aoe. What’s the point of single target attacks, when aoe is better in almost any situation. Fortunately, we have official confirmation that AoE will be nerfed.

1.5) Normal content is too easy, and GW2’s defensive mechanics place too much emphasis on skills and too little on stats, which makes the high-risk, high-reward zerker zergers builds to actually become a low risk, low effort, high reward builds. With zerker zergers (with some aoe, of course), you’re doing everything correctly. Exploring faster than other players, speed running dungeons faster, and farming for a lot more each event. You just spam your AoEs, like hundred blades, guardian’s gs skillset, elementalists’ aoe bursts, etc, etc, and loot and exp will rain down to you.

Well, GW2’s combat relies a lot on terrain control, so conquest should always be there, even if as a secondary objective only; or if not, something similar.

In my opinion, future pvp maps should either have another objective to be “equally” important as hold points (see: spirit watch), giving to the player’s the choice about which objective they would like to focus on; or have holding points as the secondary mechanic, as a means to acchieve a primary objective (for example, holding points to open doors in a kill the lord or base assault mode, holding points to make carrying orbs spawn in a ctf game, etc).

In my opinion, conjures should work more like kits (instant cast simulating weapon swapping, no duration and no skills charges), but with the drawback of having a large cooldown (like 60s cooldown AFTER the weapon is dropped). This would streamline conjures a lot, but they would still have the important drawback of taking away a lot of ele’s precious weapon skills. Then, they could make conjure shield break stun as well, simply because it makes sense for it.

Simple, and it would also have the plus of making casuals love them a lot more.

Blackhat.4016:

I am pretty sure 1000 people buying gems with real money are better for Anet than 1000 people buying gems for in-game gold. So no, they are not equally good for Anet.

Back when the game was released 100 gems were only like 50s, now they are close to 3g. Guess why? Because most people buy them with in-game gold instead of money. This is one of Anets attempts to change this situation and make some money.

People who buy gems with in-game gold, are buying them from other players who have brought gems with real money to sell them for that gold. If a new system comes in and makes people spend more in-game gold, the price of gems will rise, which will make other different kind of people, even non-pvpers, to buy gems with real money more often, because they can make an higher profit that way. So yes, buying gems with in-game gold will indirectly give anet more money.

Also, gems’ prices have been stable around 1.7g, before the new online shop items popped up this month. After the new items, it increased to 2.7-ish, but has been that way for days. This means that, even though more players have been buying them in-game gold from other players, more players have also been buying them with real money to sell them for gold.

Anyways, this is a bit off-topic. :P

An ultimate zerker amulet would be overpowered to classes that can burst fast and hard, and have enough self defense mechanics. Shatter mesmers and Backstab thieves would be completely broken. Likewise, an healing power, toughness and vitality spec would be completely crazy for bunkers as well.

There’s a reason why all amulets are hybrid to a certain extent, which is to prevent extremes. This current meta alreayd relies too much on bunker/ burst extremes, and the devs are already trying to nerf it. Creating those kind of amulets would only make the problem worse.

However, I do think more amulets (as long as they aren’t offensively or defensively extreme) would open up new possibilities. For example,
- Power/ Toughness/ Healing Power (but I guess that would be too strong, thus why Valkyrie’s exists);
- Power/ Precision/ Healing Power (would open viable glass cannon builds for elementalists, guardians, etc);

Blackhat.4016:

PvP player has no gems but wants his own CA-> does not want to play PvE -> spends money on gems -> happy Anet

You do know that spending real money, or spending in-game gold, to buy gems are both equally good for Anet, right?

If more people are buying gems with in-game gold -> the cost for gems gets higher -> more players will want to spend real money to buy gems, because they can sell them for more gold.

Scepter Guardian dueling esport.

Each player must stand facing each other, with a capture point inbetween them.

Rules:
- Only auto-attacks allowed.
- Hitting the opponent with the scepter’s ball is worth 1 point.
- Stepping on the capture point counts as a foul. Players will know this when the point turns into the color of their respective team. -3 points to whoever steps into it.

Winning & Losing conditions:
- The first player to get 10 points wins, and stays on the battlefield.
- The loser must commit suicide to let a spectator team member come into play.

So, for April:
- Beta for Custom Arenas.
- Spectator Mode.
- More balance changes than normal, with plenty of splits.

Cheers.

April’s patch will certainly be big for pvp:

http://www.guildwars2hub.com/features/editorials/flame-and-frost-retribution-preview

On top of all of this and according to ArenaNet, the Flame and Frost: Retribution will see one of the biggest balance sweeps of structured PvP to date with an even greater number of split-skills between PvE and sPvP.

I really, really hope that the devs add silver awards for ranked matches for this update. 40 minutes of matches with about half the games won should be worth the same as 40 minutes of completing a dungeon: about 60-ish silver.

This would help pvp players not needing to farm pve to have money for CA, and also help PvX players to get on par with pure pve players.

Meglobob.8620:

I hope the new dungeon is really, really, really hard, seriously I want it to be virtually impossible to do…

Anet have been far, far too soft on us with the dungeons they have created so far…

I don’t think this dungeon is a good candidate for that. It’ll finish up the story of F&F, so it’s meant to appeal to a lot of casual story-driven players. It’ll also introduce new combat mechanics, it seems, and the sites are stating it’s also meant to reward players by mastering new mechanics. If anything, this seems like it’s on the level of the ascalon catacombs.

Rerroll.9083:

Most top 50qp dont play anyway

How do you know that? Regardless, I’m sure most of them will play it for this patch, and with 25-50 custom servers for the beta, it seems good enough for me.

Besides, the devs did say they wold reward the qp players somehow. So it’s fair.

It makes sense for them to test CA in beta, to see if everything is alright. The fact that we can play it already will be enough.

I have a question for the community. I don’t know how the hgh build works. Is it considered OP, or merely “strong in a balanced way”?

I consider myself a fairly decent (bunker) elementalist player. I’m not that great – I make a lot of tiny mistakes, I’m more casual than hardcore, but hey, I managed to be at leaderboard’s 885 rank today, somehow, and I’m consistently at 85-90% rating, with pugs only. Pretty proud of myself, even though my best scoring shouldn’t last much and I’ll fall from top 1000 next time, if I haven’t already. ^^

But what I want to add is, hgh is a prety new build, to me at least, and I’m not aware when it became meta (was it since last patch?), so I usually don’t know what to expect from it. As someone who has been using the meta ele bunker recently, I’ve lost and won against hgh engies a fair number of times. I must say I enjoy how I can kill them and they can kill me, at least so far.

As a bunker ele, fighting them is far more interesting than fighting against stealth backstabers, infinite clone generator machines and never-ending boon borefests.

Also, some people shouldn’t so freely throw out words like “l2p” and “bad players”. Not everyone is top-tier. Not everyone has a perfect knowledge of how the builds from other professions play. For average players like me, not knowing tiny, obscure details that can make one profession win over the other in a fairly balanced duel does not make us “noobs that need to l2p”.

Bunkers are definitely the way to go for soloq. They have been indirectly buffed last patch (and that will only change from next patch and on), and usually, if they can hold the points at the beginning of the match, the match is probably won for them.

I’ve been playing a bunker ele, and I’ve definitely noticed that bunker eles and bunker guardians are this month’s soloq meta. There are many times where I feel like I carried the team, especially in closed matches where I can successfully hold an ally or neutral points multiple times or for long periods of time. Usually, I get killed against coordenated spikers, the occasional really good duo, or zergs, but, especially for the later case, that gives space to my team to get the other points back.

Also, this bunker meta is a bit stale. Lol. When your team is losing and you know each point is being guarded by a good bunker ele/ guardian, 1v1, 2v2 or even 3v2 point battles take forever, all the while their team is scoring. When (if) a team gets to reverse the tides, the other one is usually winning by 100-200+ already.

I’ve been getting close matches, and it has been fun. But I just faced against a premade right now, and pretty much lost it 500vs15, with one leaver on my team at the middle of the match, and with half the team pretty much having given up early on.

I’m gonna do another match, let’s see if it’s worth it.

EDIT: Against another premade hehe. But we pugs actually won this time.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Dueling is a feature that could happen anywhere in the game, and could be picked up by a team other than the sPvP team.

That’d be the ideal case. A duel system would bring closer together this game’s cap between pvp and pve, and if any other team picked it up, it would free you guys to work on other pvp stuff. It would be a good way to support pvp (and not only pvp) without requiring the pvp team to spend its time on it.

Good to know that new game modes are already being thought at.

We have tweaks to do for conquest maps, but overall we like a lot of them (and some of them we’re still not 100% happy with – so they may never make it into the tournament rotation).

I’m slightly confused here. :P Are you only talking about unicorn’s map (the only one that never made it into tournament), or about conquest maps that are currently in development, or are you mentioning the possibility of some other existing maps being taken out of tournament?

Exedore.6320:

1. Offensive play is in theory just as good or better than defensive. (…)
2. Every good competitive format in a team game requires communication and coordination as a tenant of good gameplay. (…)
4. Opinion. Some people enjoy it and others see the greater good. If you don’t like it, find a team where someone else will guard.

1. I’m not talking about player builds directly, but about the format. Conquest is a defensive format, or at least, the way conquest was implemented in GW2. Conquest is about defending points. This is a fact. And usually, the audiences prefer offensive formats over defensive formats. Formats that incentivate teams to push forward, and not to stay on a point passively.

I don’t have much experience in pvp games whatsoever, but I remember an offensive-oriented conquest/ base assault hybrid format I’ve played in Unreal Tournament 2004. In that game, capture points were linked to each other in a semi-linear fashion, and you could only capture some points further into the map after you captured some before them. I’m not saying that GW2 should have something like this, I’m just giving an example of an offensive-oriented conquest format.

In comparison, GW2’s conquest is very defensive.

2. I never said otherwise. But there are game modes that don’t depend so much on communication to be organized or deep at a basic (read = pug) level. Pugs barely have any communication between each other, and that’s the most normal thing for pugs. Conquest’s depth and fun comes mostly from something that is not accessible to pugs. That makes conquest not very pug-friendly. This can be somewhat softned up with better UI support, but there are game formats that work much better with pugs. Especially formats that guide the players into a specific point, like defend/ assault, or get-the-flag-at-their-base-and-come-back capture the flag, or many others. Conquest, in comparison, is a non-linear format. It’s a “there are three points: pick one”. And that translates to pugs running like headless chickens around the map, in an extremely unorganized way.

Short version: pugs need something more linear and/ or better UI support to guide them up.

4. There are many times where I had to bunker because most of my team didn’t want it, didn’t enjoy it, or weren’t good enough. I don’t enjoy bunkering because it mostly forces me to stay at one point for the entire match, especially in casual/ amateur premades. Other times, I asked for friends to bunker for me, and they would always ask, “wait, do I have to sit here the whole time”? and “can I leave my point already? Should I help you guys”? Yes, in well-organized premades, things aren’t as simple, and it’s easier to leave your post due to team communication and coordenation. But in pugs and casual premades, it’s simply safer for a bunker to stay at one point the entire time, because they’ll have no idea where all of their opponents are.

Despina.6970:

daydream.2938:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Just wanted to jump in and say thanks for trying to be constructive guys. Solo queue (and splitting ratings) is something we have planned. We just need to finish up other features before we can get to that one.

That’s good to hear. I assume what you have planned is solo/duo Q. so people can Q with one friend if they so wish. Is this an update that is a priority? As in (I know asking for dates right). might we see it ‘soon’ or ‘down the line’.

I guess the statement ‘something we have planned’ means not anytime soon. Otherwise they wouldn’t just delete a new topic with this statement I made.

I don’t know, pvp devs have been saying lately that they are “at the end of a development cycle”, and I’m starting to see some hints that custom arenas might be ready for this patch. For all we know, It’s a matter of days or a couple of weeks until they start working on it.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Lukrath.6982:

so…. does tht mean hes gonna buff signets?

MAYYYYYYYYYYYYBEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

I hope that a signet buff is not restricted only to warriors. :P

Mechanically, signets have great potential for fun gameplay. The idea of sacrificing one thing for something else interests me a lot. But currently, they are mostly used for their passive effects, and only when they are worth it. I think signets need to have both meaningful passives and strong actives to make the “sacrifice” mechanic worth it, but when I look at most signets, it seems like you devs opted for a rather mediocre effect for both. Would they be too strong otherwise?

P.S. Would love to see elementalist’s Signet of Earth passive give a flat 10% damage reduction like Guardian’s defensive signet and Signet of Air being a stunbreaker.

Yay buffs to more specs no one likes to play! WHoooooo! passives! so fun!

Let me tell you a shocking revelation. Signets have an activated effect as well. Maybe that’s what needs buffing?

Silferas.3841:

Or even better, are you telling me you are teamfighting and not aware of presence of a bunker guardian? I wonder, could it even be, that you are suggesting that conditions trigger retaliation?

That’s not what I said. :P I meant that, when the screen gets too crowded with numbers, it’s nearly impossible to know which one (if any) of those comes from retaliation.

Also, guardians aren’t the only profession that can use retaliation, and guardians can spread it on their allies, especially with that overpowered shout.

So yes, it’s good to have more UI support. Retaliation damage should, in my opinion, pop up with its fist drawing, much like critical hits or confusion hits pop up with a different image than normal damage’s.

The Mesmer’s aren’t the only “battle mages” in this game, nor does a battle mage only means using tricks and illusions to confuse enemies. Mesmer’s flavor is that of a duelist/ swordsman, but there’s many different kinds of battle mages in GW2. Guardian (scepter/) staff is a support battle mage. Elementalist with D/D is pretty much an acrobatic battle mage. Necromancers can be tank-ish battle mages. And conjures allow elementalists to magically simulate ranger’s/ guardian’s/ warrior’s skills, which makes elementalists a variation of the “self-enhancer” battle mage found in a few other role-playing games.

Anet has also said that the system set in place makes it easier for them to add new weapon sets to the professions, and that’s definitely something they want to do.

HOWEVER, I don’t think we’ll get any type of weapon that isn’t already available as a conjure. And possibly, any warrior-ish weapon we might get will probably be left as a conjure, anyway. I do see us getting a sword mainhand, or at least I would love it. :P I’m sure many people would want to play as an elemental swordsman.

Silferas.3841:

Retaliation is there to make you pay attention to your enemy. It counters bad play and button mashing of skills on cooldown.

Just like confusion. With a single exception. You can actually, clearly see when you’re taking damage from confusion. The same can’t be said to retaliation, especially in crowded areas or when a lot of aoe, condition damage and multi-hit attacks are involved. And you won’t always have the opportunity to watch the five or six tiny boon icons on the guardian to look for the retal’s fist.

I’d say that without further UI support, retaliation rewards bad play (watch the UI at the sacrifice of what’s happening) and – if I dare to generalize as much as you, it allows abuse from bad players to win the battle with a nearly invisible mechanic.

It won’t become a very tactical boon to fight against as long as it remains mostly sightless from the UI.

Greatsword’s auto-attack commonly hits for 5k with a glass cannon spec.