Guild Wars 2

Pretty easy:
high dmg threat(in team fight) + extremely easy to kill

That in combination is the reason why you get focused down very hard.
If you want to cast meteor shower and there is a single enemy thinking he will instantly interrupt and or kill you.

1. a nice idea

2. especially for this invi pull thieves id like to see a “Drag him along” button once you fall with a say 50% chance to pull the thief down as well
I think that would limit the trollplaying there

3.Dmg reduce wouldnt be necessary if dodge would work

Scoreboard might as well be entirely removed, especially from Solo Queue.

Its totally misleading.

emikochan.8504:

Eles can be very successful, you just have very little room for error.

That’s the Point.
You can be strong but you have to work more than a lot of other classes to archieve the same.

1. World Bosses:
Big Bosses like Tequatl are almost undoable right now.
2. Guild Missions:
You get on entirely different instances of the map, yay u have to switch your entire guild to one of the maps, that takes you a lot of time

creature.5120:

But if you wanna say becoming top100 player is only luck based, i have to denie.

It is, I was R17 3 days ago with my Elementalist,

And its just frustrating if you loose games with unfair matchups/ 4v5 or something like that

Lordrosicky.5813:

it is guaranteed 100-0 victory vs someone who might as well close down his game. That is the point.

In fact it is NOT.

1300 – 1800 direct dmg to an Elementalist is done by most classes just by taking a mere look in their direction.

Either you Spec enough into defenses and healing that the condition necro really doesnt get you below the 90% treshold, so that your attacks can be entirely ignored.
Thats a 100% draw then.

Or you make a more offensive build, but then even a condition necro should be able to bring up the 1300 dmg, so that saves you for lets say the first 3-5sec from the condition spamming.

Hence a lot of necros (the entire class can be a hard counter to the ele) cry about Diamond Skin being OP i tried out some builds as well.

First was 0/0/6/6/2 with all out healing power to keep the 90% treshold, that build one or two cant kill you, but your (I am D/D) lightning autoattacks hit for 700 , no crits at all, so you cant kill a necro with that. You could as well sit next to each other and do nothing ….. so boring.

So I tried something more offensive, since I am usually Full Zerker all out and well more adjusted to that gameplay (with full zerker I am able to kill a lot of necros cause Im faster than they proc their OP death shroud … good lord are they slow proccing that 10s CD insta-skill … being OP really makes you lazy):

6/2/6/0/0 Full Zerker , Runes Full Power as well, the idea behind was to block the intial fear of condi necros (cause usually they fear you, and kill you during the first fear if cleanse is on CD, if you cleanse it once they fear you again, you are then killed before being able to make first hit)
While this Build yielded still a lot of dmg, its defense is so weak, that even a Full Condition necro Autoattack delivers the 1300 dmg neccessary, once the treshold is hit you get spammed with conditions.
That Build worked quite well against the bad necros, the mediocre and good necros had their way around (flesh golem e.g.)
But at the same time I noticed every dmg point I was missing.

Ah yeah and in teamfights DS is indeed entirely usless.

The Result is I go back to 6/6/2/0/0, that way I am much more effective.
That way I kill >80% of other Elementalists >50% of the shatter mesmers , >60% of thieves(have my problem with the sword permainitiative perma evade ones though) , even a lot of necros and warriors.

Battle of Khylo, plattforms at the clocktower, enough distance to the stairs that it would have been at least 3 or 4 ports to get their via stairs, and he was instantly up there.

Today in solo queue i met a thief (one of those permainitiative guys that just teleport around the entire time).
And several times I saw him porting onto the platform, and afaik ports onto plattforms all got removed from the game since long ago.

So now the question, is this some kind of bug that thief used?

While the Trait itself sounds pretty good, the Ele just doesnt have enough access to interrupts to make it worth taking.

And other PvP games have much less class variety.
More classes make it much harder to balance, which would be the wrong thing.

Good analysis though.
Binding Ashes: exactly that
Lightning Rod:
I am D/D so i have 2 real interrupts (air 5 and earth 4) okay and shocking aura, so I dont know if i really benefit from it, both are in my burst rotation though.

Elemental Contingency :
Each and utter crap that trait, even if there was no internal cool down at all, the only build i can think of profiting from it would be the Aquamancer (otherwise you dont live long enough to profit) and that build usually takes evasive arcana there.

What about a GM trait that reduces attunement recharge by another 2 or 3 sec, that would be grandmaster worthy

Elementalist got a lot stronger that patch, or is it due to the nerfs of the other classes or due to the masses of PvE players doing PvP right now.

CountzuCrytus.7256:

…. able to survive a bit more damage. I don’t die if people even look at my general direction like I used to prior to patch with this build. ….

Observed pretty much that as D/D Ele. Feel a lot stronger now.

But that might be , as you mentioned, be in connection with the PvE players playing PvP now for the Dungeon Paths

Its just OP that a lot of CC-Breakers are not working on immobilized.

As Im playing D/D Elementalist for example, I dont even take mist form with me anymore, I know that skill once removed immob, but now its totally useless, cause everyone got immob with them + immob stacking.
So you go into mist form and they just immob u then u are not attackable with normal attacks (but still with conditions), but at the same time u just remain were your are. => ppl wait 3s then burst you the moment mist form ends.

And with the stacking things got just worse.
And y not being able to turn around makes it just worse

As for diamond skin i can only say, very few elementalists use it.
Cause if you invest 30 in earth u sacrifice pretty much dmg.
If you want your classic condition removal build on ele, you need to invest in water as well. Investing in Earth AND Water results in having an incredibly low dmg output and can be ignored.
I have NO condition removal at all right now, cause once a necro starts putting conditions at me I cant keep up with removing them anyway, so I just maximized my dmg in order to kill faster than the conditions
Unfortunately that Death Shroud is a dangerous counter.

The vid locuz posted pretty much sums it up

Honest Advice?
Just finish your enemy before he gets the time to finish you.
In other words be faster.

To the Video:

Hrm watched the thief part.
Seriously that was a one on one, both even bowed before and they duelled in close range on a single capture point.
In such cases I have winning quotes against thieves of >60% with my D/D as well, considering most thieves are so predictable you just know when their backstab is incoming, dodge then obliterate them.

You gain much less by losing.
But you dont get enough for a win to justify the win.
Now since they merge the systems a rate of 4-5g an hour(or something of similar worth), if you have only victories that is, would be reasonable.

CC is really strong, something that prevents perma-stun / fear / root whatever would be really great.

style.6173:

This is one of the worst thought out decisions ever at ANET.

I’ll give them a big hint as I told them BEFORE they implemented this.

YOU DO NOT REMOVE REWARDS WITHOUT A NEW SYSTEM IN PLACE

The smart approach would have been:
1. Keep giving glory
2. Stop giving glory on the day the new rewards are ready
3. Keep the glory vendors in place for 1 month following the removal of glory.

Most obvious solution!

As someone already mentioned, the problem is GW1 had a really great PvP-System
and ppl expected something equally great and got dissappointed.
And now a Patch like this doesnt make it any better.
Not Speaking about balance.

In GW1 PvP was my favourite mode …. in GW2 I often only do it for dailies now

If Trahearne was a Dragonball-Charackter he would be mister satan.

irony detected #irony

Why is it even called GUILD wars 2?

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

While you won’t out damage someone, you will generally have better defense.
While you wont be able to out heal someone, you will generally have better attack
while you wont be able to out support someone, you will still have support.

As for Ele:

1) but you dont have better defense, OR you won’t outdamage ANYone

2) you can heal ppl a little (except for blast finishers on water fields) and average attack
30s+ cds that are extremely hard to hit I dont call high dmg, cause they can be avoided completely most of the time

3) you have support, but mostly for yourself, all ele support skills are pretty selfish

Well I never said it was well-designed @juan.

But on the other hand is it okay that ppl can spec completely defensive while still having high offensive power by taking condition dmg?

And be honest burning 1500 from an ele shouldnt be that hard for anyone.

But I saw the problems with this trait coming cause that trait isnt well-designed.
Cause there is such a small percentage between being absolutely underpowered and totally OP. As for now the 10% are even underpowered.
And it does not break condition builds in general, only pure condition builds.

So ppl say well Elementalist can heal himself, yes he can but in order for that to be effective he still needs healing power / skill in water for water cd reduction.
So u have to skill 30 earth and 10 or 20 water.
In other words you lose a lot of offensive power, then you are able to survive but you cant finish of your enemy as well.

@Lordrosicky
A full glass S/F ele that is skilled is a problem for me as D/D ele as well.
Met a r54 (I know rank does not equal skill) some days ago (the only one i met so far though) and this was the first ele I met that won >70% of the times we met.
And yeah that guy was strong, but the number of eles I considered strong that I met the last 5 months I can count on one hand.
And by strong i mean just as hard to beat as a mediocre Condi or Minion Necro.

So now imagine that S/F guy didnt build full glass, do you know just how big his dmg lose is if he specs into earth?

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Give up Henry, it doesn’t matter what you bring up as an argument. Too many ppl on this forum think too one-sided. Mostly because they only look from a one-class-perspective or because they choose to ignore bad skill-design.

“It doesn’t affect the meta” or “I played it and I failed, so it must be underpowered and useless”. If I read such things I have to facepalm myself for stupidity. I hope you realize in 2 months when staff ele gets buffed, that this trait will change to a real threat. Besides that it is just a horrible hardcounter (if it’s played or not doesn’t matter), but it seems like you are not able to think further and in bigger patterns.

Well I am able to think in bigger patterns.
But you are creating problems where are none.
Diamond Skin is rarely used and that certainly has its reasons.

The Elementalist as it is now usually sees no daylight against a necro (if both have equal skill)
With Death Shroud Necros do have a health pool of 30k+, which is even in full zerker really hard for anyone (besides warriors maybe) to melt before their conditions melt you.
So now there is one tiny little GM TRAIT on ONE class, that ISNT even used frequently that ONLY counters Conditions Only builds hard.

And if you mean me with “I tried and failed”, i managed well against a condition only necro that is sure but on anything else its useless, so unless u have an enemy team consisting only of condition necros that trait is worthless.
And if that’s often the case maybe you necros should think about it, maybe then something with your class is terribly wrong.

I run D/D or Staff with 30/30/10/0/0 in PVE with Soldier Gear and Zerker Trinkets,
works quite well for me.

I never farmed those keys, but I have to say what I got from that chests so far is REALLY underwhelming. I think the TP-Price of those chests tells the story quite well.

When I get a key as random drop I open the chest (got 1 or 2 in my entire playtime since release) I once bought the key 5-pack in the store when gems were still priced at 30s per 100. And of course I obtained some by doing personal story.
What I got so far ….. boosters.

So I cant find any reason to invest time in order to acquire those keys.

I have to say I dont like Fresh Air, tried it out, but the attunement recharge solely on air is not justifying for a 30 point trait in my eyes.

Well tried Diamond Skin out myself now (usually run zerker)
And I consider it as useless, I held out against a condition necro very well , couldnt take him down though cause dealt almost no dmg (okay yeah I would have killed him after 3 min or something like that) it’s just boring.
Well besides 30 in Earth I took some defensive stats on runes and amulett.
In fact I specced full in armor and healing power. (thats why I did no dmg at all)

What happened? As I was out of Dodges a Mesmer came dealt 5 3k-hits within 2 sec
=> dead.
If thats all sustain a FULL-Toughness build has to offer, diamond skin is totally useless.

With Zerker i manage at least to win most of my fights.

Another Problem is, a 3.xxx power coefficient may sound nice, but dont forget the class u are on.
This Skill is melee, has a 3 sec channel and dont forget the class u are on.

So in zerker its kinda useless, u get killed before u executed the skill most of the times.
So you have to at least run in soldier gear and skill at least one of the defensive trees (water or earth).
Most of the ppl prefer the lightning tree over the fire tree, cause the lightning tree boosts 2 offensive stats while fire only boosts one.

So u have to sacrifice a lot of stats and use at least use LF in order to land it.
Without zerker stats churning earth dmg is far from scary for any opponent.
If you are tanky ppl can even ignore it.
When I tried out an Aquamancer Build I got up to 4.5k crits on NOT tanky ppl.
Being a immobile target for 3s, as Elementalist doesnt justify this.

There are some limited uses it can be quite useful though, baiting thiefes out of their houses before they get really invisible e.g.

Tyldor.9078:

I prefer to kill easymode builds and be proud, and don’t try to tell me that’s impossible, cause it definately isn’t.

On same Skill Level it is.

On my Ele i kill any class, even hambow , MM necro etc.
But not if they are on the same Skill Level.

I have to mention here, that due to the condition meta im running full glass cannon d/d (dont like the feeling of the scepter) for some time now, that has proven the to best counter this for me, hence I dont want to run 0/0/30/30/10 (okay you dont die easily then, but you cant do anything else as well).

Against hambows i usually only win if I literally dodge every single one of their moves, against necros if i manage to bring out every burst i have before they can cast death shroud.
And that is if they dont know how to dodge.
As Ele u have to put in at least twice the effort as anyone else , so yeah I would call that weak.
It makes me rage when i see a warrior, that cant even walk straight, after receiving all bursts still standing there with 500 life healing himself up, just hitting one knockdown and winning the fight with, while I have to hit at least 4 bursts just to be on par with his dmg.

As Elementalist I (only do hot join right) I can only say, that even as bunker thief can burn you down very fast (thats why I dont bunker anymore, cause conditions melt you away and thiefs still do enough dmg to you, ahhh and you do so few dmg, that you cant even kill a full glass build)

The Problem I see with thiefs in Hot Join are often plain stupid, you see them vanish, you know exactly when the backstab is incoming.

I saw a few really strong thiefs though, dont no how he did it but looked like permaevade with shortbow, even took down a hambow “easily”.

You can’t be stunned while in vapor form.

But when they removed condition invulnerability from mist form, they didn’t think about ROOT. However mist can be rooted.

That’s the reason I dont have mist form in utility, since everyone has a root skill right now this has become more a selfstun with invulnerability.

Well I dont go Bunker but full Zerk, but only in hot join that is, dont dare to go tpvp right now with my elementalist.
In hot join it often proves as very effective though.
At least for me it is more effective than bunkering.
Playing D/D with 3 arcane spells.
You have to be fast and dodge well and anticipate the enemies moves a little though, well okay a lot of ppl that play stupid builds like hambow etc, play stupid, so they can be outplayed well.

For Example those backstab thiefs, you see them vanish, you count 21, 22 => DODGE => burst the position you just were. Works surprisingly well.

What really hits hard in mist form (part of the condition immunity nerf) is that it is no root break.
You go into mist form => they root you.
So Mist Form is basically even useless if you just want to use it in order to get a better position (getting out of enemy splash dmg).

And thats what i dont understand, bleeding … okay, poisoning … okay, but rooting, i mean u are MIST , and some nasty little roots keep you in position?

Afaik right now condition cleanse is the only thing to get rid of rooting right now (for elementalist) and at current meta, where condition spamming is one of the most things thats done its not even sure u remove the right conditions.

Well had a similar experience with a warrior (I think it was one), everywhere game running fluently, but everytime that warrior got near me it started lagging in an unusual matter (jumping positions).
Out of my personal technical understanding I can’t imagine such a hack to exist, but that lag definitly was only when that warrior was around.

Mariux.2360:

…… here is one of my favorite – “My many hardcore friends from GW1 already left GW2”. …..

You dont understand the general Problem there. GW1 had (and still has) a very good PvP System.
With 4v4 Random 4v4 Team 8v8 Team (Heroe’s Ascent) and in Canta even 12v12 afaik.
Later on we even had that live feature just to watch ppl. And I tell you that, GW1 GVG was the only MMO-PVP I could have watched several hours.
I have to admit PVP was one of the main focuses of GW1 and of course it took some time to develop as well.
But the Problem here is, the first rumors about GW2 where as far as I can remember around 2008.

So when ppl from GW1 came to GW2 they had extremely high expectations, and especially in PvP.

So now, there is no GvG at all, the balance is off, the leaderboard often still dont works correctly, only one gamemode (capturing points) and at the same time having a rewarding system designed for a deathmatch rather than ctf.
And for the expectations that were, too few maps.
So they got 3 new maps, 2 of them …. not really an improvement ….
Spirit Watch, ppl just jump down to skirmish each other (at least in hotjoin),
and I dont want to talk about Skyhammer, worst experience there was a Perma-Fear-Nekro occupying the Skyhammer und just feared one down once u enter the portal. And I think we especially dont need to talk about Skyhammer Glory Farm I think(though they remove glory anyway).

Mariux.2360:

…… That’s a laugh. ……

My text above tells why it’s not.

For reasons (others already mentioned) grind and RNG is horrible in this game, cause
it’s an aimless grind.
You just grind Gold in order to get what you want, you cant really “farm” something, cause everything drops anywhere and yet nowhere.
The most secure income is running around in a Champ train, cause there at least you get a guaranteed yield of about 5-7g/hour, though this is insanely stupid.

Crafting is something they could have left out, it feels like “Ohhh every MMO nowadays has a crafting system …. so implement some just for the hell of it”
GW1 had none, never missed it.

The biggest mistake was, that Anet themselfes became gold sellers (I understand why they did it, but still was a mistake) cause the ingame / realmoney connenction implies that drop rates have to be low.
Drops where much better over a year ago.

And btw I played a lot of MMORPGS starting with UO, which is a lot more hard core than nowaday-MMOs and a lot more Sandbox-like.

Ah and considering Tequatl, if you do an organized Tequatl run you have to be on the server an hour before the event begins, else you are on overFLAW and fail.
And if you defeat him, you get completely random stuff.
Okay maybe I shouldnt complain about drop rates there, cause i got 2 ascended weapon boxes there (in around 50 kills), of course both with stats so useless, that i had rather gotten a rare item, which would at least be 25s at TP.

Ah and before I forget it, the funny thing is, the most “profitable” way to play the game is not playing the game at all, it is playing with the TP, somethings imbalanced there.
Okay even more effective is going to work, earn some real money, and then convert to gems.

You shouldnt cry about it, because there is NO sPvP requirement at ALL.
So all that crying ohh, PvE ppl dont want to change their playstyle, and getting a Legendary would require having played any aspect of the game is a made up discussion.

And as long as Legendaries are tradeable this is an utterly useless discussion anyway.

@ Impact
I’d seriously like not to use Elemental as Ultimate in PvP for Elementalist, but other stuff is pretty much crap. (for sPVP that is)
FGS : No improvement to basic weapon sets (only the power buff), but current FGS-skills are only good for autoattacking with increased power.
Ah and the whirl is nice to make some distance ……. But thats not the single reason I summon an Ultimate

Cyclone: Well rather long casting time, slow speed in it

Lucidity.5947:

answer: go glassy and 3 shot them.

exactly that
30/30/10/0/0 zerker / celestial D/D arcane wave , arcane projectile, lightning flash
and lava tomb (most of the times in hot join ppl are stupid enough to try to finish you while standing on the lava field mwahahahaha, they die you know xD)

With this build I even almost oneshoted a necro (arcane skills go through instant so burning speed ring of fire and both arcane skills hit almost at the same time)
And gave some thieves a 11k facecheck firegrab, as well as a 12.5k facecheck firegrab to a mesmer.
Ah and in fire get fury using blast finishers on fire fields.

I mean you die very easily, but the seconds you live you can deal so much dmg, and if you meet an unprepared foe, they sometimes die before they realize it.
The best thing was a tripple kill against 2 thiefs and a ranger trying to capture a spot aoe burst booooooom.
Then they downed me and my lava tomb helped me ralley.

I got the digital deluxe edition last time it was on sale.
What confuses me is, that i could still buy the digital deluxe edition.

Wouldnt it be intelligent to remove items that are to of no use to you, because you already bought them?

Just win the fight fight before they realize you are there .
Conditions Necros are slow and lazy cause thats what their class/build is all about…. believe me it works

Well,
It got that bad due to the instance finder, making it much easier to find a server where its open

He dies in <1 min.

His health points should at least be doubled.

Yes right played Engies can be strong and annoying.

But what i really thinks needs to be nerfed is rooting.

Or at least let Stun Breakers take root from you.

Thats what I think makes some engineer builds rly OP,
the class itself is not though, Id even say its weak