Guild Wars 2

Make Staff A3 and PBAoE knockback, and combine the swiftness and escape abilities of A4 into it. Something like:

Whirling Gust
PBAoE Push
Grants 10s of swiftness
Cures cripple, immobilize, and chill
CC Breaker
Whirl Finisher

Because lets be honest, how often do we use staff A4 in battle?

That opens up A4 to be something with a higher damage yield (as per the air attunement description) and gives further utility.

Xetelian.9278:

All I know was he wasn’t telegraphing ANYTHING.

Maybe he bugged because he was pulling and one shotting.

Yeah, he was. you just didn’t know what to look for. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I find it far more likely that you didn’t see his tell, rather than you encountered a bug which hasn’t been reported by anyone, ever.

Just learn the encounter, my group finally ran kohler without a single person wiping and dang did it feel good.

Krazed.7458:

Ender.3508:

Also, are we forgetting that our second run of the day (30 tokens) is still giving the same reward as our first run from before this system? 90 tokens in 2 runs, as compared to 50 from before? What is there to complain about besides some people unfairly getting hit with DR even though they shouldn’t, and THAT will be fixed.

Guildie gets 15 tokens first run, 5 next run, 0 for anything after. 20 for 2 runs, that’s far below pre-patch. Not everyone is having the same problems, some are even more screwed than most of us, which is amazing.

Yes, I know. That’s why I added a part about people getting hit with it when they shouldn’t be. However, many are complaining about the very idea of diminished returns, and I think that for those complaints to be valid, we should wait until the kinks are sorted out.

I think it’s sloppy to patch in a system like this without proper testing, and hopefully AN has learned from the experience. I just feel the torches and pitchforks are being raised too early and pointed at the wrong aspects and problems.

Joe Chip.9538:

ref.8196:

You gained the normal amount gained before the patch and you feel like you didn’t gain anything?

Ahahah, oh my god. This gotta be one of the dumbest reasoning I’ve ever heard.

Actually, it’s spot on. It’s not fair that he was hit with DR, but consider the state of things from before he still nabbed the same token reward as people were getting pre patch.

Nah, you guys won’t get refunded, but add that pug as friends, and get together when this gets sorted out. You guys will rock, and you’ll have a great reward too.

I’d say be patient. I know its frustrating getting hit with DR when you shouldn’t have. Had a guildie that got 30 tears and 10 silver for his first run in 2 days while the rest of us got full reward. It’s frustrating and we have very little tools at our disposal to help the devs figure out how and why this is happening, yes that’s an oversight on their part.

However, DR system, they way they designed it, once relatively bug free should be able to go almost completely unnoticed if you are actually running different paths like intended.

The second, and only other issue really is tuning the other paths so they’re all similar in lengths or difficulty. I think the Detha path is a good baseline for AC:ex difficulty. Trivial if you know the encounters, but hair-tearing-out frustrating if you don’t. Kohler can wipe your team if you aren’t prepared, but he’s a punching bag if you’re ready, the zerg event can wipe your team if you slip up once, but is completable with no wipes if you’re organized. The ghost defence has wiped my team numerous times, but last night we completed it (a bit sloppily) with only two people having to rez and run back, and ghost eater….well yeah he’s kinda pathetic but still.

Give the devs time, post your bugs, be polite and accurate about it. I can tell through my own personal experience that they are trying to break not only the MMO paradigm, but the money hungry corporate video game paradigm as well. They don’t have the same manpower as a giant like Blizzard, butkittenif they couldn’t fool me.

Also, are we forgetting that our second run of the day (30 tokens) is still giving the same reward as our first run from before this system? 90 tokens in 2 runs, as compared to 50 from before? What is there to complain about besides some people unfairly getting hit with DR even though they shouldn’t, and THAT will be fixed.

Lay off the wardrums, give AN some time. IMO they’ve done a wonderful job so far (with the exception of stealth nerfs: cursed shore omnomberries?). Let them continue to do their jobs, continue to give your feedback and have fun.

Water field
Entire team uses blast finisher
…
…
Heals!

I can support this idea. It wouldn’t be the end-all on game updates, but would be a great resource to let the devs know what we feel is important to us.

There’s a lot of whining over in the Ele forums about how UP we are. As a primary staff Ele I can understand the frustration. We attunement dance, dodge roll all day long, chill, immobilize, cripple our enemies, and lay down AoE after AoE to survive even a single lvl 80 trash mob. Sure when left to our own devices we are fairly devastating and we support our allies well.

Those of us who roll staff tend to realize that its not the best for soloing, which IMO is perfectly fine. We turn to our combo fields (of which we have 4: fire, ice, water, and lightning) and study them intensely in order to be of use to our groups and guildmates.

Still though, it seems a bit lackluster. So I propose this idea:

Make combo fields stack.

In a span of 4 seconds, in one attunement we can lay down 2 water fields and one ice field, but ourselves and our teammates can only proc combos off of one of them?

Why can’t I proc 2x Area Heal and 1x Area Frost Armor with an arcane wave? After all I did take the time to set up the fields. And before anyone starts with accusations of how OP this would be, in order to make any kind of meaningful use of stacking fields, you’d require a group that works like a well oiled machine to generate enough heals to even recover 50% of a level 80 HP bar, and that is what this games philosophy is supposed to reward, right? It’s not so much about your numbers vs theirs, but your skill and strategy and timing vs theirs.

All this does is expand the utility of any support build that makes strong use of combo fields, ele’s just happen to be arguably the best at it since we have 20 weapon skills as opposed to 10.

In addition to the above change, I highly recommend that some effects be buffed. Both Ice-Proj and Ice-Blast effects have pitiful durations. I’ve heard that Whirl finishers are altogether useless except in the case of condition removal. Area might, swiftness, and healing have great durations, but they’ll hardly turn the tables in a tough fight. In general projectile and whirl finishers are simply weak and really need a buffing.

Lastly, I’ll leave you with a pipedream: a mesmer lays down time warp just as I law down frozen ground, and a ranger pops healing spring, the ranger opens with quick shot as I swap to air and put down my lightning field. I then swap to earth and fire my projectile finisher for the remainder of the time warp. When the fields go away, [insert dungeon boss here] has 25 stacks of confusion and vulnerability and a 25 second chill duration.

Or, working with another staff ele, we both lay down eruption and and use the delay to swap to fire and stack lava font in the same place and pop arcane wave giving 4 blast finishers on two fire fields: 8 procs of 3x group might for 20 seconds.

That is utility, rooted purely in teamwork, something I hope to see more rewarded as the game gets updated.

Said this a few other times but haven’t ever seen anyone mention it: stacking combo fields e.g. Lay down W3, W4, W5 in rapid succession and arcane wave inside it grants 2 aoe heals and aoe frost armor.

That, and make certain combos more powerful bc 2sec of frost armor is f/ useless.

Midnightjade.3520:

Ender.3508:

Nah, dont take away our only staff blast finisher. The delay allows you to lay down E2 swap to fire/water/etc, lay down your field and use arcane wave to get a double blast finisher allowing for instant group 6 stacks of might.

I’m going to try this tonight – thanks everyone for the great advice!

Glad to hear it! I’ve been theory crafting with an engie, ranger, and mesmer on the possibilities of groupwide 25x stacks of might, and 25x vulv on the enemy. We seem to be making progress.

My problem is some combo fields simply dont do enough to make them useful. A quickened ranger using quickshot over my ice field should lay down enough chill to make sure kohler never gets that pull off again (exaggerating obv.). 2 seconds of frost armor from a blast finisher, really?

The duration from fire-blast is good, water heals for an okayish amount, especially if you chain blasts from it.

One glaring problem is that anything-projectile simply doesnt have enough duration. When you have an entire team applying chill, or vuln, or poison, or fire through a field, it shouldnt disappear 5 seconds after the field goes away.

Another is that blast finishers or pretty weak in general. Some are good, (fire, poison, smoke) but most are just weaksauce.

Fix those, and allow field stacking and a highly skilled group could keep a strong uptime of 25x might on themselves and 25x vuln or 40s chill on the enemy.

Nah, dont take away our only staff blast finisher. The delay allows you to lay down E2 swap to fire/water/etc, lay down your field and use arcane wave to get a double blast finisher allowing for instant group 6 stacks of might.

I just wish combo fields would stack, eg frost field on top of water field to get area healing AND frost armor, or 2 water fields for double the healing.

It requires planning and coordination, but a well oiled team could make these really powerful.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

It is frustrating and unfair that it is happening, and we’re working on it (it has happened to me as well, and I share your pain). As a dungeon designer, it’s pretty upsetting to see dungeons being thrashed to pieces on forums due to this bug.
People are rightfully upset, and we have the best tech-priests on this side of the Imperium, and we’re all working to resolve this thing ASAP.

EDIT: Let’s keep things on topic, people.

This is the type of post that deserves praise, not retribution. THIS is what sets AN apart from the likes of Blizzard. In my eyes a humble and well meaning apology goes miles farther than whatever shady BS tactics they teach in PR school. Please continue to be upfront with the player base just as you have here.