Camping Fire, so much fun.
Except, you know, their skills aren’t good enough to warrant 30s use. FGS is the one that gives some reason to actually hold it longer, but its CD isn’t anywhere near 60s.
Ok? we had that for all kinds of classes. Even up there in the 40s you have condis thieves overpowering you. This is small hitbox btw large one you are prob first dps regardless.
All the more reasons why tempest is more and more irrelevant, no? In my static I was the only one who consistently played ele recently. Others changed to ele only for Gale Song on Sloth, rebound on Xera and for KC.
About hitboxes – since both Phoenix and Wildfire got nerfed heavily against large hitboxes, I expect only staff to have some chance. But even for staff, overloads account for a significant part of your damage, so…
So make it complete trash for 6 weeks? Doesn’t strike me as a very bright idea.
You honestly believe that these changes make Ele complete trash? I suspect Ele will still be on the high end of the dps list again despite the changes.
Depends on how bad the other classes were handled tbh. Comparing the performance of the ele to the pre-patch one, the loss is substantial and enough to get it out of the meta.
Idk other than a few cases this patch was good.
Idk, other than completely ruining Tempest it could’ve been good. I really cannot know, as I stopped reading after the finishing the ele changes.
Nerfing the dmg of tempest was the only logical thing to do with weaver coming out. It also fixed the mess that tempest was (kindof)
By making it irrelevant for the upcoming weeks until release. Such a nice thing to do to your customers.
This statement is a massive exaggeration, ele is still on top in term of support and dps. At leadt do some testing in game before mouthing off.
Is it?
Ele support is irrelevant in PvE, which is what I care about. And I did test its dps, the loss is substantial. Meanwhile power mesmer does comparable (if not better) damage by spawning 3 phantasms and pressing 1 and 2 off cooldown.LOOOOOOOOOOOLLLL on small hotbox ele is at 30k mes is at 28-29k. Tempest is a great support it doesnt need buffs all it needs is anet to see that gotl is a mystake.
Suppose your numbers are right, one you can play half asleep to get those numbers, the other you have to focus or lose like 1/3rd of it.
If you remove GotL, druid will still be by far the most popular healer in pve, because it will still have Spotter, Empower and spirits. Ele simply doesn’t have a place as a pve support. All it gives is a bunch of boons nobody cares about.
As of last week, Elementalist is 2nd best healing class in PvE. They would be best if we only count healing output, however druid has way better buff/boon support.
Your normally see druid healers in raid, but groups would use elementalist for either training or facerolling.
I’d take Ventari Rev over aura Ele any time. The ele can heal, but it does nothing to improve the damage output of the group. The rev can at least pump some alacrity and maybe give AP.
Idk other than a few cases this patch was good.
Idk, other than completely ruining Tempest it could’ve been good. I really cannot know, as I stopped reading after the finishing the ele changes.
Nerfing the dmg of tempest was the only logical thing to do with weaver coming out. It also fixed the mess that tempest was (kindof)
By making it irrelevant for the upcoming weeks until release. Such a nice thing to do to your customers.
This statement is a massive exaggeration, ele is still on top in term of support and dps. At leadt do some testing in game before mouthing off.
Is it?
Ele support is irrelevant in PvE, which is what I care about. And I did test its dps, the loss is substantial. Meanwhile power mesmer does comparable (if not better) damage by spawning 3 phantasms and pressing 1 and 2 off cooldown.
I have one toon of every class at level 80, in full ascended. But I keep playing my ele 90% of the time, because the other classes simply aren’t as fun for me. Even if I switch to another character, it won’t keep me in the game until PoF release.
if we require a full picture, why bother giving us half a picture which was basically just ruining peoples fun for a month and a half?
Yes, im definitely sure your profession dealing a bit less dps will ruin your fun. Just literally unplayable.
“A bit less”? Like, spec full glass to get every single bit of dps possible, go through a complex rotation, train it so you don’t mess it up, then get in party and get outdps’ed by a support class? Sounds pretty fun, right?
Idk other than a few cases this patch was good.
Idk, other than completely ruining Tempest it could’ve been good. I really cannot know, as I stopped reading after the finishing the ele changes.
Nerfing the dmg of tempest was the only logical thing to do with weaver coming out. It also fixed the mess that tempest was (kindof)
By making it irrelevant for the upcoming weeks until release. Such a nice thing to do to your customers.
After seeing many complaints thread about balance, I would like to remind people that we still don’t have to full picture about balance yet. It has been seen in the demo that barrier function are integrated into the core traits and skills, also I might be wrong, but I think the traits and skills are different from the current balance patch.
So what seem to be a useless trait now might not be so useless with the new function added to it.
Lost dps is lost dps. Adding barrier in the picture isn’t going to help at all.
Tempests had its reign as top tier DPS during HOT when they needed to sell copies of the expac. Now that PoF is out, they had to nerf Tempests so that people will buy the new expac for the Weaver spec.
Pretty much this, and i’m ok with that. If tempest is too strong, no one will want to do anything else.
So make it complete trash for 6 weeks? Doesn’t strike me as a very bright idea.
Idk other than a few cases this patch was good.
Idk, other than completely ruining Tempest it could’ve been good. I really cannot know, as I stopped reading after the finishing the ele changes.
Raids are not the be all and end all, stop making changes to the classes just to balance the very top end PvE scene that 90% of the player base can’t even get close to.
Just because a few players in some no lyf guilds can achieve a billion DPS that doesn’t mean you have to nerf the class for everyone, including for SPVP and WvW players.
Most of the players can’t even get to half the DPS numbers in the online benchmarks, and yet you make changes just because someone posted a video of him getting a gazillion DPS on a golem on his 468th try.
/rant over
How is that balancing around raids? In a raid you rarely get even close to the golem benchmark numbers as well. At best, it’s balancing around SFTA. And it’s stupid, I agree.
I’m not sure…
Haven’t had time to test yet, but with the changes to conjures and arcane, and the nerf to tempest dps we might have the good old water hammer build back.with fire/air/water, using lightening hammer, you get to sit in water for 30% dmg bonus (piercing shards and aquamancers training), with the bonus from air (bolt to the heart, ferocious winds, tempest defense) and fire (burning rage and power overwelming) or arcane… scepter dagger for might stacks, lightening hammer, gliph of storms and arcane blast.
Oh joy, I get to autoattack with a LH. Such fun! It’s totally why I rolled ele on day 1, right?
Tempests had its reign as top tier DPS during HOT when they needed to sell copies of the expac. Now that PoF is out, they had to nerf Tempests so that people will buy the new expac for the Weaver spec.
That’s exactly what it feels like. Which is utterly disappointing for two reasons.
First and foremost, it undermines the idea of the elite specs. It would have been nice to have a choice between the different playstyles of Tempest and Weaver. Which seems highly unlikely now.
Second, it makes Elementalists irrelevant for the next 6 weeks until release. I was pretty excited about PoF but I’m honestly questioning if I should have pre-ordered it now. 6 weeks of nothing to do in the game not only can kill my excitement, it could very well make me move to another game.
Staff hasn’t been meta for a while. Power Staff was meta before Power Dagger/Warhorn, which was replaced by Power Scepter/Warhorn, which was replaced by Condi Dagger/Warhorn. If reviewed now, a Condi Staff build would top the Power Staff build, but it still wouldn’t be good enough to replace Dagger/Warhorn for either.
The only reason the former meta build can be found is because it wasn’t taken down a year ago when Dagger/Warhorn replaced it and that was long before the Condi meta took over.
Power staff could still be considered meta on certain encounters. I preferred to play staff in all W3 and I preferred to play Fresh Air staff on Sloth. On large hitboxes the damage was still competitive enough to call it meta. That’s before yesterday’s changes. Today, I’m not sure ele exists in meta at all.
There’s one big problem with this. It makes zerk the only choice for any damage dealer, ever. Zero variance, ever. So no, it would not be a good fix. The condi/power split is good, because it creates choices. Yes, there are “choices” in the game where you can trade offensive attributes for defensive ones, but we all know they are irrelevant in PvE and virtually nobody picks these.
But then, how does condi vs power create an actual choice. You are essentially changing the formatting of the numbers above the enemies’ head because either way you’re speccing for DPS.
Because one of them is going to be better for your class and you choose your gear with that regard.
If anything, if removal of the distinction breaks the ability to have meaningful choices in PvE, then that just hints at a bigger underlying problem in regards to PvE choices, or rather how things seemingly being player-choices are in fact inconsequential. If we all spec for maximum output, why have Viper and Zerker gear? It’s the same as just having Zerker gear in the end, doesn’t really change that.
Games are like that. In the end it doesn’t really matter much what choices you have or make. What matters, however, it the player perception. Having a choice – illusionary as it might be – making it and being happy with the results are what matters. Of course, you can go way overboard in that respect, too. Older RPGs had many different types of damage (Titan Quest, for instance, had physical, several elemental types and piercing). Having this many can be a detriment at some point, as you could end up with a build which simply doesn’t work against specific enemies. GW2 has this toned down to an acceptable degree while still giving some choice. I should probably mention there’s more to it than “zerk vs viper”, too, depending on the use case. For instance, if you’re building a character which you intend to play mostly solo, you could consider sacrificing some stats for the sake of better boon coverage. “Zerk vs viper” is only choice in the endgame, where the boons are provided by designated roles in the party.
I saw here a lot of suggestions from the raiders about the gifts for WvW armor, and how difficult and how gated should be these gifts. In my opinion the cost for upgrading the precursors to the WvW armor should be symbolic. Minimal at best. Because only to acquire the precursor is already a much much much greater effort than the legendary Raid armor. Not mentioning about the lack of “shiny” of the WvW armor.
Personally, I don’t much care how large or small the costs are. I actually would prefer them lower, as I play WvW myself, so I wouldn’t mind another set of purple armor for cheap. However, both of these statements are false.
First, the effort is only real for the Mistforged Triumphant armor. The lower tier is much, much, much easier to get. Namely, because it doesn’t require you to have rank 2k. And you are able to get it by simply following a tag. Much master, so effort.
Second, Mistforged Triumphant does feature a shiny on its own. I’m not that dedicated to WvW to realistically hope to get it, but that’s
Lastly, “rank 2k by pressing 1” is an obvious exaggeration. Yes, nobody will actually do that. Just like nobody will actually buy its way to Perfected Envoy and remain a casual. The very same logic applies. Players tend to underestimate greatly the mastery required by game modes different than the ones they are playing. Don’t. Comparing difficulty across the game modes is next to meaningless. They are difficult on very different terms.
I agree with OP, all my support to you man
Fractals are slowly becoming some kittenty daily elitist meeting, i ran away from raids because of this, now the cancer is slowly spreading
Be really careful for the next fractals anet, fractals were never supposed to become what they’re becoming.
kitten raids and kitten shattered observatory
Normal 100 is pretty easy once you get used to it, what are you talking about?
I also love the notion how elitism is just now emerging in fractals. I’m not sure if it’s more sad or funny.
Fair enough, as long as they add another stat that condition builds need to invest in to gain max benefit. Like halve all the durations and then let condition damage crit so you need to invest in ferocity as well.
In all seriousness, this would be a good fix:
- Condition Damage removed.
- Condition Duration removed.
- Conditions now scale from Power.
- Conditions can now critically hit.
- Critical Hits are calculated per tick, and will use your Precision and Ferocity values.
This has two big upsides: For one, it puts the balancing game in the hands of scaling numbers alone, making it easy to balance DoT vs DD on each specific class.
Second, as they now both scale the same way, and the only big difference is DPS vs DPCT focus (and ofc cleansing vs toughness), classes can be designed to inherently work “more with DoTs” or “more with DDs”. As a function of class theme.
There’s one big problem with this. It makes zerk the only choice for any damage dealer, ever. Zero variance, ever. So no, it would not be a good fix. The condi/power split is good, because it creates choices. Yes, there are “choices” in the game where you can trade offensive attributes for defensive ones, but we all know they are irrelevant in PvE and virtually nobody picks these.
Let me say this straight: you can play whatever you want in generic PvE and do well. But power staff is meta for a reason, and the reason is it performs better. If you’re not concerned about efficiency/endgame and just want to have fun – then by all means, experiment with all the stat sets you like. However, the question was about best dps on staff ele. As of now, it’s full zerk. Maybe the expansion will change that with the Power/Condi/Prec/Fero stat set. Maybe it won’t. We’ll know after we try it.
I don’t see why I should put so much effort, time and gold into getting just another trenchcoat for my Thief. It’s not an incentive for me to do raids. People do this for the looks and prestige, not for utility. I’m not crafting HOPE because I can change its stats, I will never do this, I craft it because it looks cool.
Medium legendary armor simply doesn’t look cool.
People definitely craft legendaries for the utility. The same reason people buy shared inventory slots. Some utility items are just as expensive as legendaries. Why would anyone put money or effort towards those if people just want looks and prestige?
Just because you wouldn’t doesn’t mean other people wouldn’t.
I’m sure there are people like that. I’m also sure they are a very small minority. The legendaries are ridiculously expensive and they’ll never be a cost-effective way of changing your gear. Most of the people craft legendaries because that’s the long-term endgame goal this game has, and because they are shiny. The added QoL is just a small bonus.
Feanor.2358crunchyraisin.6054
3.) Raiding does not take more effort, time, or coordination than other game modes.
Yes it does, in regards to the special rewards. You can grind the WvW armor by following a tag and pressing ‘1’. It’s a very real possibility. Yes, not all the WvW players do that and yes, it is not much fun. But you can do it.
You can also buy the raids and obtain the LI without even pressing 1. Yes, not all the players do that, and yes, it is not much fun. But is easy and fast and you can do it. I bet that not too many of the raid buyers will start a WvW armor. Because it is not as easy as buying a raid – for this you should be there for hours and actually to do something.
Except you can’t. You can buy most of the achievements, but not all of them. Also buying 150 LI would be ridiculously expensive, so while it is possible in theory, it is more likely for someone to hit the 2k rank in WvW by pressing ‘1’ than doing it.
CM rewards are fine, considering they’re on top of what you get for finishing a fractal. Yes, most of the times it isn’t much, but the occasional jackpot bumps up the average enough in the long run.
None of the advice the ‘raiders’ tips on how to join a raid are working for me.
So you either lack the time for it, or you aren’t dedicated enough. Which is perfectly fine, by the way.
I looked for a raid in my every waking moment using whatever tips for 3 months but I got tired of it. You could tell me to keep spending another 3 months to look for it, and I might get a raid. I still wouldn’t consider it accessible.
But whatever, no matter what I say, you rather stop people like me from enjoying raids from changes that would have zero effect to you.
I find that hard to believe. 3 months after I became interested in raiding I was already past one training guild and pugging successfully most bosses every week. 3 months later I was in the exp static group I keep playing with to this moment. It is not because of some exceptional luck, it is because I actively sought both. Raiding is a dynamic process, players come and go all the time. My static has changed more than half its players since I joined it. Again, this is not an exception, as I see players I’ve raided with share the same experiences. So there are always opportunities to join raiding teams. It’s only up to you to make use of them.
Honestly, the invuln Rigom seemed like a bug which simply got fixed.
Perhaps it’d be better in new fractal was in category of its own? T5. And move CM versions and further new fractals there too?
We don’t want to make a Tier 5. Players historically all try to concentrate in the highest tier, and adding another one just means further spreading out the player base,. Eventually they will all end up in Tier 5 anyways, it just requires even more progression and hard work to get to the end. We feel like T4 is good for “max difficulty” and CM’s allow us to add another layer of challenge for hardcore players without requiring us to make T5 versions of every fractal.
If I may add: CMs are more interesting and fun way to add extra challenge, at least for me. I’d take more or more complex mechanics over plain hp/damage buff to the enemies any time.
Lava Font and Meteor Shower both cause damage over time, so burst isn’t particularly strong on Power Staff Ele. Signet of Fire and Overload Fire are outstanding burns, and Flame Burst is really good. That’s three. With Glyph of Elemental Power, you add five strikes with burns. With Arcane Shield, you pick up another good burn. Both of those also break stun. Toss in Arcane Brilliance as your heal for another burn.
Plus, it’s not like you can’t do power damage. You don’t ignore skills just because they could be more effective with a different build – this is a hybrid, after all. While power will cause roughly 250% of the power-based damage thanks to advantages in precision & ferocity, a hybrid will cause over 500% the condi-based damage.
Since we’re counting, here are the major sources of power damage, in order of appearance in the rotation – Overload Air, Glyph of Storms (Air), Lava Font, Meteor Shower, Fireball, Overload Fire, Frost Fan (Icebow), Ice Storm (Icebow), Firestorm (FGS). That’s 9. The burst is fantastic, I assure you. Many of these are over-time effects, but you can stack a lot of them in very short time, and they hit HARD. Also, unlike Signet of Fire, they give you excellent cleave.
If you want to go condi, get Dagger or at least Scepter. Staff is trash for condi.
That fractal is really bad for any level and mode. I know that it’s the one fractal daily i will definitely pass on. The satisfaction that comes from finishing it is just not worth the frustration it causes.
I have to disagree. Normal mode level 100 is just another daily fractal. I would much prefer it to, say, Underground Facility which is long, tedious and features Toxic Trails.
Honestly from a Revenue point of view for GW2 I think it makes a lot of sense to add a ‘easy’ and ‘normal’ difficulty to the current existing raids.
You’ll have very hard time defending this statement. I don’t see any obvious market advantage to adding these – it would simply make people complaining about raids complain about them with a different reason – but I can clearly see related expenses in the form of paid development time.
Taking these 3 factors into account, i.e lower spend on GEMs, lower percentage of player base and only a portion of raiders (I don’t think all current raiders are against multiple difficulty settings only a portion would be). The loss of revenue from implementing this would be minimal.
Wrong. First and foremost, “easy mode raids” aren’t going to increase the playerbase. They aren’t even going to reduce the rate at which it diminishes over time. The reason is quite simple – this is content created around the assumption it is fun for the players because it is challenging. Take that away, and you have only two possibilities.
1. Keep the rewards from normal mode, which will be totally unfair to raiders and will make a lot of them quit. These are veteran players, who spend a lot of time in the game. And no, we don’t only buy stuff with gold. The casual players, on the other hand, are going to play for a while until they realize they need to grind for months for the legendary armor and lose interest. I would expect the overall result on the revenues to be negative.
2. Reduce the rewards accordingly, which will cause the players who complain about easy mode to try them once and never touch them again, because they’d be playing pointless content which isn’t rewarding enough. The impact on the player base will be minimal, the revenues generated non-existent and the expenses very real.
On the other hand I know plenty of players who I use to play with during the release of HoT who have quit due to lack of accessibility to raids.
What someone thinks is why he quits the game and why he actually does it are two very different things.
I honestly wonder if the time and resources devs spent on developing raids in its current form vrs the net increase/decrease in real world money spent on the game was profitable. Given how many players who have told me they have either quit or taken a long break from the game due to raids I would imagine they actually lost money by making raids so hard to access.
There’s a very simple answer to that. Do ANet plan on releasing more raids? They do. Then the raids have been a success. Game development is a business. Nobody throws resources at obvious failures, doing the same thing over and over and hoping for a miracle. If something fails, you either cancel it or change it. They aren’t doing either of these.
Let me be clear I am not saying remove raids with the current difficulty. Challenging content is good. However not having steps to learn the mechanics and progress your way to the more challenging content makes no sense.
Raids do have that. They introduce mechanics incrementally so the players can get familiar with them, and then combine said mechanics to create the actual challenge. It is a much better system than fractals, which simply let you faceroll the content until you build up your AR. Why bother learning the mechanics when you can ignore them? See all the complaints how hard the new fractal is? It’s not hard. People just aren’t used to learning mechanics. And that’s exactly because of the fractal tier system. This is also the reason why fractals aren’t the stepping stone to the raids, by the way. In terms of difficulty, Nightmare and Shattered Observatory challenge modes are comparable, even harder than many raid bosses. But players prefer to complain how hard they are instead of learn them, because they are used to facerolling content, they are expecting to faceroll the new content and they aren’t happy when they can’t. Here’s a radical thought – perhaps you shouldn’t be able to faceroll challenging content, should you?
None of the advice the ‘raiders’ tips on how to join a raid are working for me.
So you either lack the time for it, or you aren’t dedicated enough. Which is perfectly fine, by the way.
Oh geez, the newest content added to the game with the intent of being challenging can’t be beaten by rolling your face on the keyboard! How dare they!
For the record, I haven’t killed Arkk on the CM yet either. We’re doing it with some guildies when we have some spare time and we’re making steady progress. It’s not that hard.
Ty for your opinion. Let me be clear on one thing. I don’t raid. I simply don’t have the time. But imo I am a good fractal player. 99cm is easy for me. Also I play to have fun, and Arkk is not my idea of fun. I understand some ppl like the challange and big gz to them. But having a pulse of constant 200 is not my cup if tea.
You do realize this content is only hard because it is new, right? It will become progressively easier not because it will get played by some uber-skilled raiders, but merely because players will get more familiar with it. Just like Nightmare CM, not every fractal player will be comfortable beating it, just like not every raider is comfortable with CMs in raids for instance. It’s called “challenge mode” after all. That’s the point, giving a challenge to players who seek it. If it’s not your cup of tea, that’s fine. Playing it is optional, right?
In my experience “t4+cm” pugs have been a considerable improvement over the standard t4 pugs. The former are a lot less likely to wipe over and over on stuff like Cliffside hands.
Oh geez, the newest content added to the game with the intent of being challenging can’t be beaten by rolling your face on the keyboard! How dare they!
For the record, I haven’t killed Arkk on the CM yet either. We’re doing it with some guildies when we have some spare time and we’re making steady progress. It’s not that hard.
With a staff, I’d take a Vipers hybrid (1 Sinister earring, 1 Sinister ring) over the pure power build. Use Accuracy & Bursting Sigils with Balthazar runes. You’ll come up short on the power and crit/ferocity calcs, but more than make up for it in condi damage over a Berserk pure power build. You can camp Fire and enjoy your whole rotation, using Signet of Fire whenever it comes off cooldown.
You get too few burns on Staff to be worth sacrificing gear stats, runes, and a sigil for these. Signet of Fire and Overload Fire are your only decent burn applications and they are both on long cooldown. The power build not only will have far superior burst, it will have higher sustained damage too.
Ah, so what you actually care about is the rewards, preferably received without any effort on your side. I’d say “good to know”, but it’s hardly news to anyone.
What requires more effort, molten duo or shattered observatory? Which gives better rewards? Unfortunately they both give the same rewards. Do you know why arah p4, aether path, and SE p2 were never ran? Because anet never properly balanced the rewards. Proper balancing of rewards is essential to keeping content alive.
The comparison is irrelevant because of the daily rewards for fractals. If Shattered is daily and the Duo isn’t, they don’t give the same rewards. So you don’t get to choose the easier one. Do you remember when the dailies used to be 3x Swamp? This system was introduced to counter that very issue, and it did.
Furthermore, Shattered’s difficulty is comparable to Nightmare and even Chaos on normal mode. Did people stop to run these two? They didn’t. They won’t stop running Shattered either, they’ll just learn it and it will become a smoother experience, just like it did for the others.
CM is where the difficulty is amped up and – surprise, surprise – it does give better rewards.
@Feanor I hadn’t considered that people would grind out the armor without intent to play that game mode at a high level. So while that is a very good point, I feel like my other two points can each stand on their own as reasons why this does more good for the game than bad.
I don’t disagree with your overall assessment, just with that particular argument. I’ve supported the idea of WvW getting the next legendary set in the past and I’m happy with how the situation turned out.
I’d be surprised if the gifts turn out to be locked behind something fancy. Thinking about the game as a whole, it is usually the precursor that has more complicated requirements, while the gifts are mostly material sinks. There are the exploration gifts, but they aren’t exactly difficult to get either.
3.) Raiding does not take more effort, time, or coordination than other game modes.
Yes it does, in regards to the special rewards. You can grind the WvW armor by following a tag and pressing ‘1’. It’s a very real possibility. Yes, not all the WvW players do that and yes, it is not much fun. But you can do it. You can do virtually the same in PvP. No tag, but you get the idea. You can’t do the same with the raid armor. Yes, the fights are scripted, but no, it doesn’t make them trivial.
That said, I’m fine with the current situation. It’s perfectly fine for the other game modes to have their own ways of attaining the same functionality as long as the raid armor remain exclusive in some way. Unique skins are a perfectly valid way to do that. By the way, the Mistforged Triumphant serves the same purpose for WvW, although it doesn’t technically require more skill. The amount of dedication needed, however, is respectable.
It’s important that, if you believe this is something the game needs, you make that known.
Try believing less, questioning and analyzing more. One can believe in whatever they please, it doesn’t make their belief relevant, or even true. Like there are people who believe a game needs “easy mode challenging content”, which is an obvious oxymoron.
Agreed. They are supposed to be dungeons, not raids. Anet has been failing miserably for the last 3 fractal releases, each one becoming more raid than dungeon. Nobody gave a kitten about stepping stones to raids. If you want to get into raids, find a group for raids…
If that’s failing miserably, I’d love them to fail more.
Even though I have yet to do this new fractal I can agree with the OP and other concerned fractal players. Unlike raids, fractals should be any class, and puggable.
Really though, raids can be done by any class and are puggable—it’s the community that makes it so meta-centric, not anet. I mean the same could even be said about dungeons and how the dungeon elitists will be like, “If yer not running berserkers you’re wasting everyone’s time.” Although, dungeonscensters HAVE chilled out a lot since nobody cares about them anymore.
The dungeon elitists back then were mostly speed runners. The berserker builds had nothing to do with actually being successful in the dungeon. But when ANeT removed the money incentive that speed running dungeons was built around the dungeon elitists began to disappear.
The builds for raids however are meant to deal with the speed at which you need to defeat the boss. ANeT created this little thing called an enrage timer to create an artificial difficulty level. Instead of a boss fight that any class could enter and take down the boss in an enjoyable fight, you need to DPS the kitten out of the bosses or you die due to the enrage timer or the instant death timer.
As for fractals, they were meant to be quick mini-dungeons. But they have recently been edging closer to raid-like.If you think the difference between dungeons and raids are the enrage timers, you’re sorely mistaken. Enrage is mostly a pity mechanic. If you’re hitting enrage, you’ve been failing mechanics consistently and generally struggling with the encounter. The mechanic is there to spare you a long, exhausting fight which you’re most likely to lose anyway.
The thing about the design of the new fractals is, they feature more mechanics. In this way, they are closer to raids. However, the same makes the fights much more exciting and fun to play. It’s just a new, and better, approach to designing instanced content. And in fractals there isn’t even the issue of the difficulty. Too hard for you? No problem, just drop down a tier.
And get trash rewards in the process.
Ah, so what you actually care about is the rewards, preferably received without any effort on your side. I’d say “good to know”, but it’s hardly news to anyone.
Fiery swords are fine (both the flame and the ice ones, the latter you can get easy).
Personally, I’m going for The Shining Blade.
I’ve sunk so much gold into making food and equipment for both wvw and raids that i doubt that i’ll have enough after the patch the change my gear. I’m a pretty casual player so if this update goes live i’ll probably just stop playing.
So… if you’re a casual player, why did you (apparently) make 1000s of food in advance? I mean I always carry 20-40 of a food, and make some more when I drop under 20.
The foods that i usually make (mussels knashblade, bountiful sharpening stones, rare veggie pizza, toxic sharpening stones and focusing crystals and furious sharpening stones) are expensive to make or time-gated. so by me saying i’ve sunk a lot of gold i meant that i have a decent amount of this food (between 30-40 on relevant classes) that’ll soon be completely useless for the purpose i made it for.
Welcome to the club. Remember that time they nerfed seaweed salad? Now you know how it felt.
Sorry, I misspoke, I should have said, “the next patch with fractal and sanctuary updates”. It is coming very soon, apologies.
Is this also the patch that will give the sanctuary the ability to put us back to where we started/used the pass?
Yes.
Can we get the same QoL on the other passes?
Absolutely, but if you’re willing to give up a utility slot, I think “Unravel” will be quite an interesting skill to play around with. With two charges and a 25s count recharge, it should cover enough of your important reactive 4/5-skills that you need to swap attunement for. However, it doesn’t help you through the 4 second lockout if you just changed attunement and need to react with a spell from a different attunement (this lockout is only 1s for base ele and tempest). Fresh air is another way to get quick access to 4/5-skills of another attunement, but hardly swiftly enough to be deemed “reactive” (and also does not help against the global 4s lockout if you just changed attunement).
Fresh Air does help, as the global “lockout” is still a normal cooldown. However, it only lets you enter Air fast, the rest of the attunements will still be slower.
There’s a stance which lets you fully attune to element in the next 5 seconds. Aside from that, you’ll need to wait the 3s for the attunement swap to recharge before using it second time.
I hope it doesn’t turn out that Weaver is by far the highest DPS in the game, because it’s probably going to be a very hard rotation. Top tier DPS + hard rotation = pugs become insufferable (currently pugs are VERY ok compared to old dungeons for example).
Hard dps rotation has to be top-tier dps or it will be useless. What you’re worried about is being top dps with a big margin.
Back to topic, quickness on Firebrand looks good, but what about alacrity?
From what I’ve seen in WP’s footage Weaver seems absolutely absurd. Both in power and fun. Expect massive nerfs boys and girls.
Kind of overdue. You’re pushing 40k dps, mesmers are bottom feeders at under 15k.
Great job comparing full glass dps spec with a full support tanky one. Obviously the one that has better survivability and better group support should have better damage too, right?