Guardian allied healing is generally pretty bad without healing power and % outgoing healing. Go all the way for it or don’t go for it at all.
The base guardian isn’t even remotely viable, at least not in PvP.
You can try this for a mid-long ranged support build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQJAWTl8Ah+dYnQweIwPELWEFWAcALp8un7/eWGUenHA-TZxDQBv7CA8k9Hg3TAAAHCABWGAA
It’s not meta though, so if that’s what you’re looking for then you’ll have to look at other classes.
The only virtues that should be getting buffs are base guardian virtues.
Deserved every nerf it got.
you mean a heal that required the enemy step over a invisible aoe was overpowered?
Yep. Having a small requirement for a heal to activate doesn’t mean it gets to be overtuned.
I’m using the heal right now. And actually it’s one of the quickest heals to cast.
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Reaper_-_Power_WellomancerIt has a 28s cooldown if traited.
It siphons health and grants protection if traited.
It is a light combo field, which means that you can cleanse (up to 7 but not sure) conditions with Soul Spiral (reaper), or gain light aura.
This. If you’re using Runes of the Chronomancer, it gives quickness too.
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If GW2 gave out balance patches as frequently as LoL, it’d be a much better game.
Currently in pvp Elementalist has no viable power builds. There is one build worth playing using Tempest and ONE other build using core spec, and that’s fresh air.
Glass staff eles aren’t meta, but they’re definitely viable, even if they’re hard to play.
^This.
Every nerf the DH got was generally reasonable and deserved. Compared to some other nerfs, DH nerfs weren’t even that bad.
Deserved every nerf it got.
Actually it’s been like this since specializations were implemented, I’m surprised everybody forgot. As Cephalo said, it does work, it just doesn’t show in stats (or skills?). They should probably fix that sometime.
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If you can keep them in the AoEs yourself, then sure, but staff eles aren’t really optimal for dueling. Elemental Surge’s immobilize got buffed a bunch, so that’ll be fairly easy to do if the enemy doesn’t have a cleanse available, but chances are they probably do. The only other reliable ranged alternative is using the frost bow in conjunction with an immobilize to freeze them.
Denying the area around the user is a bit tougher since the best AoE skills have big cast times (Meteor Shower, Ice Storm, Air Overload), but I suppose it’s also possible.
If you catch out thieves and stuff like that, you’d probably be able to stun and burst them, but against the likes of warriors who have stability, invulnerability, and blocking skills coming out of every orifice, it’ll be a bit tougher I think.
It would be nice if they made skill splitting for WvW as well, because that doesn’t seem to be a thing (resulting in the gutting of the mesmer’s SoI).
Was the freeze ever nerfed at all? I thought it was only Ice Storm.
They probably could’ve buffed Ventari a bit, but otherwise I think most of the changes are justified.
Topic. It’s about time; I’m really glad ANet has been showing more focus to weak utilities lately. Off the top of my head, various guardian utilities got buffed, the ranger’s shortbow got buffed, and various weak ele skills got buffed.
Plus overpowered stuff got nerfed, even better. So I say good job ANet. :0
The only criticism I have is the fact that the Mesmer’s SoI didn’t get skill splitting, and capping normal boons to 5 stacks might be too restrictive.
A bunch of underused stuff got buffed. I don’t really know why people are complaining, this is exactly what ANet should’ve been doing for ages.
How nice of ANet to split the nerf it got because of PvE; I wasn’t really expecting them to do that. It’s not perfect, but overall I think I’m impressed with the balance changes in this patch (like buffing a lot of underpowered stuff for example). :>
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I think these changes were pretty good. Underpowered stuff got buffed, and overpowered stuff got nerfed. If ANet did this sort of thing every patch then the game would be a lot more balanced and it’d have a lot more variety.
And no, the problem with Signet of Courage isn’t that its useless pulsing heal doesn’t pulse frequently enough. The only semi-good thing about it is the full heal, but it was borderline unusable because the cast time was ridiculous.
I’d be okay with these changes – assuming every other profession’s power creep got nerfed as well. Otherwise these are pretty dumb.
What power creep would that be for Necros?
Their synchronization with Engi and/or Ele on point. When there’s a class that babies Necro across the street, he’s suddently meta.
Necros are fine to me actually. They’re not that faceroll-y and they actually require cooperation from allies to work efficiently, which is pretty good design in my opinion.
I don’t really view this trait as a problem, and for the past 4 years it’s never been considered a problem either. Quite frankly, there are much better sources of protection and regeneration that don’t involve the risk of having to be downed and revived (like Boon Share Mesmers and Herald Revs).
Something people often ignore about AoEs is the fact that they provide area denial. If a bunch of people jump onto an ally in an attempt to kitten them, a lava font+meteor shower has a good chance of either killing them all, or getting them off of the location of your ally. This is also usually a scenario that pops up for cleaving for/against someone rezzing. Since PvP is point-based, this is even more of the case. In this case, the AoEs can be avoided, but if they’re placed properly, they’ll be avoided at a consequence.
There’s also the scenario of placing an AoE on somebody, and then either the user or an ally CCs them so they can’t move out.
tl;dr: AoEs are fine if they’re used with a brain and not for the purposes of dueling.
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I’d be okay with these changes – assuming every other profession’s power creep got nerfed as well. Otherwise these are pretty dumb.
Rebound will be: give delayed heal and aura, no longer negate lethal dmg. All shouts will have 50/60/70s cd to remove inconsistency in theirs cds. Cleansing water will have 5s cd. Persisting Flames will no longer increase duration of fire fields. Glyph of Elemental Storm will have longer cd and cast time, lightning will have reduced amount of impacts. Lightining overload will have reduced amount of impacts. Each meteor in meteor show will have 1target hit not 3. Fireball will hit 1target not 3. Lava font 20s cd and flame burst 20s cd. Shooting ice cd increased to 90s from 20s. Static Field and Unsteady Ground cast time increased to 2s, becouse of how powerful walls are.
It’s funny because they would actually use terrible logic like that to justify ridiculous nerfs.
I guess you guys are back to making bad changes. I’d say “do skill splits for some of these changes”, but I doubt that’s going to happen.
SoI was fun while it lasted. You guys may want to consider buffing all of the underused and/or useless utilities before nerfing things into the garbage can.
I’m getting flashbacks back to the Frost Bow.
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I think you mean the third hit in the auto-attack combo.
The mace has been buffed several times in a row now. It’s actually a pretty good weapon, it just can’t function properly in PvP because the mace only really fits in close-ranged tanky support builds, and the only tanky-ish healing amulet is Magi’s now (since Cleric’s got removed), which is probably about the worst amulet in the game due to its terrible combination of stats.
If you ask me, I think the staff is more deserving of buffs right now, and -outside of PvE- maybe even the hammer.
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The biggest complaints about tomes were that they couldn’t be used enough because of their cooldown and duration. So I don’t know where you’re getting this “clunkiness” thing from. Additionally, I don’t see other professions complaining about their transformations much besides eles.
Lich Form isn’t used much simply because its used by power necros, who aren’t meta, and Rampage was basically an “I win” button for awhile, before it got nerfed.
Elixir X is used a lot, although it gets criticism for being random (not for being a transform) between one of the best transforms (Rampage) vs the worst transform (Tornado). Tornado is garbage, but then again, so are all elementalist elite skills. There’s nothing wrong with transforms, even if you personally do not like them.
Tome of Wrath got replaced with Feel My Wrath, which is better (in terms of strength, but not necessarily fun) but is still overshadowed by other elite skills. Tome of Courage got replaced with Signet of Courage, which is garbage, and that’s not just because of the cooldown.
Tome of Courage provided sustained AoE healing via Heal Area, sustained AoE cleansing via Purifying Ribbon, enormous protection/regeneration spam, AoE CC, and burst healing in the form of Light of Deliverance (ironically one of its worst skills). Signet of Courage only does the latter, except on the same cooldown without the stability and other benefits that were provided by tomes. So no, it doesn’t do the same job and it never will.
You should also realize that even if Feel My Wrath and Signet of Courage were stupid OP, that doesn’t necessarily make them better designed or more fun than tomes. In the case of Feel My Wrath, it’s not as bad (still boring by comparison imo), but Signet of Courage is inexcusable.
I WILL say, one change I would like to see is to allow external healing to effect you when in shroud form. This really hurts necro synergy with most support, as under pressure necros pop into shroud to surive at the same time team-mates will try to give them heals, doing nothing for the necro. This is one of the biggest weaknesses in soloQ imo.
This. It’s annoying as hell when one unleashes a bunch of burst healing on a necro when they’re low, and then they enter shroud so it’s all wasted. I don’t blame them of course, but something should really be done about that, even if it’s just like 50% of external healing getting through.
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Amulets should be balanced on an individual basis rather than giving arbitrary “sets” of stats per amulet. The celestial amulet was broken way back then because it offered way more stats than every other amulet for seemingly no reason.
For example, Magi’s is absolute garbage but stuff like Carrion certainly doesn’t need any buffs. There’s also Marauder’s eclipsing Berserker’s, partially because it offers more stats for no apparent reason even though its stats are already more well-balanced.
It feels like PvP amulets punish you for focusing in something, but it should be the other way around.
Can we have a “Guild Wars 1 Elementalist” spec? I loved the fire/air viability, and dealing real damage with “ice”, coupled with control. #NerfIceEle
I’d quite like something like that as well, or at least something that let’s you specialize in an element or two.
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If it applies burning, then chances are its base damage will be nerfed.
Well that the point of being a mages class your spells are every thing and always will be every thing your not about your armor or weapon. Stop trying to make ele classes into a war wantable.
*Wannabe
but yes, this. I can’t stand it when people want a class to have the strengths of other classes rather than focusing on its own unique strengths.
I don’t see the problem. They haven’t committed to anything more than what they’ve said.
That is the problem. What they said is meaningless; people would appear to want tomes back but the only thing they have to go on is that super vague statement. It kind of seems like that was only said to help sway people to the side that wanted tomes gone, rather than as reassurance to fans of tomes that they’d be coming back.
They’d have kept their promise either way.
Yes, which is exactly why it’s such a weak promise. They didn’t even say that tomes would return, they said “we’d like to bring them back”.
While that seems like a nice promise, it’s also an extremely vague promise. A tome elite spec will be amazing, but if it’s only going to come out in expansion number 5, it doesn’t really mean much.
What did people actually like about tomes? They were useless in almost every aspect of the game and suffered from the typical low duration/high cooldown ratio that every form suffers from. As for the elites they were turned into, “Feel my wrath” was sadly overshadowed by Dragon’s Maw as the go-to dps elite. If they reverted the original cooldown nerf back to 30 seconds, it would probably see a lot more use. And Signet of Courage was dead on arrival because of the high passive heal interval. And a 3 second interval with a 242 heal, it wouldn’t be that bad. And a 3 second cast instead of the monstrous 4 1/4s one with movement allowed would help too.
edit: spelling is hard
Regardless of how much they were used or how strong they were, tomes offered very interesting and fun skills gameplay-wise and thematically. If they were weak, the solution was to buff them or rework them (into kit-type skills for example) rather than completely removing them from the game.
Feel My Wrath and Signet of Courage are both part of what the old tomes were. Feel My Wrath was one of the best parts of Tome of Wrath, and it came with a low cooldown as well, although personally I think Judgment was its most stand-out and interesting skill even if it wasn’t necessarily its most sought after skill.
The best (and most fun) part of Tome of Courage wasn’t actually the full heal (it was Heal Area). The full heal was designed to be used with ToC and its other abilities. Naturally, isolating the full heal with the same cooldown and cast time, but without the huge defensive buff, stability, and extra abilities (like Pacifism, which worked very well with the full heal) from Tome of Courage, it was bound to turn into a train wreck. Tome of Courage was also one of the exceedingly rare instances of support in GW2 that wasn’t just a 600 range PBAoE ability.
And a 3 second cast instead of the monstrous 4 1/4s one with movement allowed would help too.
edit: spelling is hardWith banner being on a 2 second cast to resurrect 5 people and provide buffs for a long duration, a 3 second cast is still overkill and should only be 2 seconds as well.
And speaking of banner, all the res utilities should really have their cast times reduced to 1 second.
It can’t really be compared to a normal revive skill. The banner is an elite skill, and thus its cast time and effects are justified (it also has an absurd cooldown).
2 seconds would be nice I think (although it might be pushing it), but 1 second would be pretty broken I think. From my experiences, if you cast the revival signet as soon as someone drops, they almost never get finished before you can finish casting. Personally I think they should work on making revive skills (at least single-target revives) adjust their target based on whether their target teleports or not, because reviving things like thieves and mesmers gets pretty annoying if they don’t know what you’re doing.
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I think “Ritualist” would be a great elite spec for revenants. Thematically they match quite nicely, so there’s already that.
Don’t forget about guardians. :>
Moral of the story is that he shouldn’t be in charge of entire classes (or anything?).
Maybe you guys should search back a few years in the forums and see how players felt when all we had was tomes for elites.
I don’t want tomes back… ever.
Yeah, a bunch of morons were upset that tomes weren’t as overpowered as Renewed Focus, and thus wanted them to be replaced by duller elites that were assumed to be as overpowered as RF (but weren’t). The aftermath is Feel My Wrath which is okayish, and Signet of Courage which is complete and utter trash that you shouldn’t touch with a 10 foot pole.
Despite this, a fairly large majority of people still thought tomes were a great concept. As such, the devs involved with removing them said they’d come back in a future elite spec. Doesn’t look like they’re coming back yet though, by the look of the recent leak. So people who liked tomes now get to enjoy getting ****** in the kitten for another 2-3 years (or more).
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Agreed. Engineers paid a price for the convenience of kits – kits are the factor that balances against engineers having no weapon swap and the least range of weapon sets out of any profession in the game. Guardians, having a conventional weapon swap and among the largest range of weapons in the game (I think warriors are the only ones that beat them there?) are highly unlikely to get something they can freely swap like engineer kits.
If guardians were to get a tome spec, then they should just lose weapon swapping. Kind of like how elite specs are actually supposed to make you trade off something.
If you-know-who is still in charge of the next elite spec, then there’s a good chance that it’s going to be worse.
I think a staff would’ve been more interesting and appropriate, but “spellbreaker” sounds interesting to me depending on what they do with it.
Conjures being instant cast would help them a lot, although I think it’d be nicer if the majority of them actually offered useful skills. For example, Ice Storm (and by extension, the Frost Bow) used to be great before it got nerfed because of PvE abuse.
If the leak is true, they’ll likely be getting a sword or greatsword.
It seems like most of this community would prioritize overpowered abilities rather than fun or interesting design, which is pretty kitten embarrassing honestly. Tomes were removed because of this, and -given the opportunity- I bet everyone would support that change again.
Considering we’re basically without a defensive or offensive Elite…
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Renewed_Focus
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dragon's_Maw
Not only are they defensive and offensive respectively, but they’re both very good elites as well. I dare say that Renewed Focus is one of the best elites in the game.
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Tomes were my favourite skills by far and one of the main reasons I liked guardians so much in the first place. I almost ragequit the game when they were removed, and I’ll probably do so if they aren’t back by the next expansion.
I’d personally like a main-handed pistol. I’m expecting a main-handed sword, not that I think that would be interesting, although I think it’d be a bit hard to tell which weapon eles will get next considering that they lack most weapons.
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^
These skills blocking AoE in addition to projectiles would make them extremely overpowered if they weren’t nerfed in other areas (like cooldown).
I don’t like the Diamond Skin idea at all. We don’t need more “on hit” traits on a class that dies in 2 hits.
Diamond Skin was fine and interesting until they nerfed it to hell to promote their condi-cheese meta.
This.
I don’t even remotely see why guardian HP should be changed.
For once I agree with Nike, Save Yourselves’ weakness is even in its name. If the skill is underperforming, it should be buffed but its weakness should remain because its 100% intended and its part of what makes the skill interesting. Give it quickness, stability, a cooldown decrease, etc, but it shouldn’t grant any notable amount of resistance.