Full power. 3 is used to optimize rotations and 4 is useful just for the extra dodge. You can use it for its damage, too, and don’t forget the 10% damage modifier against burning targets.
Depends how much you value fun and how much – rewards. I keep playing T4 because for me they balance both. I don’t care I can get more rewards by repeating 40 for the same time.
A fluffy pink charr warrior?
Lord FarEn, pls.
I’m going to cut to the chase. I hate raids. I despise raids. I hate the entire archaic concept of them. However, I will tolerate them. Still, fractals had to be messed with and put a raid boss in there. The new Shattered Observatory fractal.
I play fractals to AVOID raids. If I wanted raids, (I don’t) I’d play raids. Fractals are supposed to be small-medium dungeons. You guys were on the right track with Chaos, Nightmare. WHY did you change this? I tried the new fractal. I PUGd up to Ark and wiped 10 times. As it is now, I’m not playing this stinking fractal ever again.
IMO the fractal should’ve ended after Viirastra boss. Ark could’ve been another separate fractal as a stand-alone boss. If that’s not possible, then nerf the difficulty at the lower levels.
Raid cancer is literally spreading.
P.S: This is at level FREAKIN 25! Normal!!
TL;DR:
I can’t be bothered doing boss mechanics, I’d rather have a bag of hit points to punch.
Good news! There are bosses just for you! They are known as world bosses and they are located in open world maps. You might want to avoid some of them though. Because, you know, they involve some mechanics.
P.S. New fractal boss fights are awesome. “New” as in recently released/updated.
Does anyone know what the elementalist elite spec will be for the next expansion? What weapon will it use? I am farming gold like you would not believe so I can get gear for my toons and their respective elite specs.
Please, no more elite specs: one is more than enough. If we get two elite spec next expac that will drastically reduce the way that we create our own builds. Just think about, two elite specs means we will be “forced” to take these two elite trait lines: Tempest + the new one.
The whole idea of elite specs is to have several to choose from. And no, you’re not getting forced into getting both of them, you can only pick one elite line.
Auto-attacks are different in this game compared to others. Most auto-attacks in most games are a single attack filler to be essentially ignored while playing. In this game auto-attacks are essentially 3 skills the last of which usually has an added effect. It would be acceptable to make wanting to finish the auto attack chain once started preferable within the rotation irregardless of what’s come off cool down during the chain.
Except not every auto is an attack chain. Especially not on ele.
Had you kept reading you would of seen me address that a bit and give an example of it being ok. The whole point of my post is that the variety is more important than providing one actual way for auto-attacks. Fun is subjective and each player finds something different to be fun. There is no right way to do auto-attacks. Players need characters that provide a variety of ways to do them as an mmo’s game design will have differences to make different classes appeal to more people.
D/x builds work not because of Air auto, rather because of Fresh Air, most often with Air Overload which does the bulk of the damage. Variety is nice when you’re first encountering this class and getting the feel of it. After playing it for hundreds of hours, players tend to do the obvious, efficient thing. And it is very, very bad when this is the autoattack, because this makes the actual gameplay very boring. Even the simplistic D/x Fresh Air rotation has some gameplay in it. And while I agree fun is subjective, it is hard to imagine someone would find gameplay consisting of pressing “1” fun.
By the way, interrupting the auto is usually punishing. It is true for most (maybe all?) auto chains, it is also true for Fireball for instance.
Then we must remove the experienced ppl from the equation (just like Dungeons + Fractals) and put a ‘’hard block’’on the liquid rewards they can earn per month from the HoT raids , or put them on 2-week cooldown when completed (killing the end boss) .
It will push them to the newly expanion .
People will go to the new expansion anyway. I heard the term “legendary trinkets” passed around, but regardless I’m certain there will be enough incentive for that in any case.
The hard cap on rewards exists and its weekly. It makes no sense to cap it further, unless you’re actively trying to kill raids. You’re aware that the raids are instanced content and dedicated players playing them regularly aren’t hindering casual ones from doing the same, right?
Auto-attacks are different in this game compared to others. Most auto-attacks in most games are a single attack filler to be essentially ignored while playing. In this game auto-attacks are essentially 3 skills the last of which usually has an added effect. It would be acceptable to make wanting to finish the auto attack chain once started preferable within the rotation irregardless of what’s come off cool down during the chain.
Except not every auto is an attack chain. Especially not on ele.
Feanor is wrong…. again about core. Core war GS and axe/shield is strong than Zerker GS axe and shield. Since stun heal bot has been countered and even more so after the nerf. GS and Hammer on vanilla outshines Zerker GS. Hammer any day. I mean do you even play wvw in NA. Guess not.
No, I play in EU.
It’s great that you’re taking time to update existing legendaries. However…
Waaaaay too generic. Each and every projectile gets replaced by exactly the same effect. On Elementalist, it looks ridiculous. You can’t tell apart Phoenix, Dust Devil and Water Trident. Seriously disappointing.
They can remove the enrage mechanics from each boss , so even ppl with soldier gears can kill it , painfully slow , and a 25 min restored HP to avoid any exploits .
I’ve said it multiple times, enrage is extremely unlikely cause of wipe. If you can’t kill the boss, it’s because you fail mechanics, not because you lack dps. You don’t need minmaxed builds with perfect rotations to meet the dps checks. You don’t need anything close to that, provided you don’t fail at mechanics.
And what is the problem again ?
Without a enrage mechanics , it will remove the sociological effec that atleast you must have some specs to boost the dps/survibility of the party , or having to worry of that 15 min benchmark .
Even if you can do the Raids with Knights gear atm , then ppl will choose to inv ppl with Berseker gear (just like dungeons ) , but atleast every1 can take thier time to play as they want without the ‘’bitter effect in their mouth’’ .
They wont be able to beat the last boss (beucase they will take their time , and the madness effects will stack up) , while the last tier 1 madness boss can have a chance to drop some prestigious Weapon Skin for the l33t players + massive gold for completing the Raid as fast as posibleHeck … the guilds can summon the 10(+1) stacked end boss for a single fight , if they want the loot faster .
Or allow 2 guilds to compete in a same time ’’Tournament’’ , while they see each other as dots to get comfused(edit: regadles of what we do or think , most ppl wont touch the Raids even in the next x-pack , because that feeling of ’’despise’’ once tasted , it wont wash off …. but why not waste some money , for an extra 6% participation ? :P)
The problem is removing enrage timers will do nothing.
Inexperienced parties will keep wiping long before the enrage because they’ll keep failing mechanics.
Experienced parties will keep requiring meta builds because they’ll keep wanting smooth and fast clears.
They can remove the enrage mechanics from each boss , so even ppl with soldier gears can kill it , painfully slow , and a 25 min restored HP to avoid any exploits .
I’ve said it multiple times, enrage is extremely unlikely cause of wipe. If you can’t kill the boss, it’s because you fail mechanics, not because you lack dps. You don’t need minmaxed builds with perfect rotations to meet the dps checks. You don’t need anything close to that, provided you don’t fail at mechanics.
Urban Battleground, 2 changes: the fighters’ charge skill hits WAY TOO HARD for even tier 1 difficulty (btw, why do I get “hit” by the monks’ Heal Party for 5k damage?); for tier 4, the beginning Ascalonian mob that comes for the party is too big/tough. I’ve surrendered to the fact that the party will wipe 3-5 times just to clear the Dulfy-aggroed group (more if playing the Toxic Trail instability). Most people rage quit after try #2.
Just a remark – usually a single Sandstorm is enough to clear the whole mob without a single player dying.
I would think as a developer you would want to make the most used skill and effect the most “fun” and easy use effect in the game. For ele that is the 1 skill. That just simple logic.
And it’s wrong. You never want to make the autos the most appealing skills. Have some effects – fine. Maybe even have them setup a combo. But the rest of the skills have to be better. Otherwise there’d be no point in using them ever.
100% boon uptime shoehorns classes into a rather boring playstyles that have to upkeep perma buffs taking all the panning away.
There’s no sense of burst because theres no cordinating bufffs and preplaning and calling out when something will be available.
Might, fury, quickness, alacrity, banners spirits all can be kept perma and make the compat boring and braindead.
Regen should be the same with certain build focushing more on hots and other builds on burst heals and other on both.
Make permanately upkeeping buffs a personal thing something that you have to do because your own dps or personal bufff uptime depends on it.
Have the aoe buffs as small windows of opportunity to coordinate heals or cc or burst.
There are way too many buffs that would have to be coordinated for a good burst. It would only lead to much frustration and blames. In other words, it would be bad design.
Boon duration is free for the amount of stats used vs any other combo in the game. A free 33% from one sigil is out right silly and 33% from a simple passive from a class on an aoe is crazy making all classes in that pt specialization in boon duration even if they are not build for it. As things stand its harder and less effect to clear condis in gw2 then simply to have a boon. Much like a stun brake is less effect then simply having stab for some reason anet is saying passive def is better then active def. That a real problem and the ele class feels it a bit more for support out put then others classes.
Free? Both the sigil slots and the party slots are a limited resource. Using them for one thing means you can’t use them for others. Nothing ever is free. And of course passive defence is better. Not because ANet says so, because it is more reliable. There is less chance of you failing the timing to prevent an effect.
Ele is far from ok it at the last ditch class type the healing and that only viable because the tempest line is able to do both dmg healing well to the point of simply overshadowing the ele other core lines. With out tempest ele would of been a dead class altogether.
When was the last time you saw a core Warrior in the game? Elite specs are more powerful, that’s not news to anyone.
On a note to you Feanor your defining Anet a lot kind of a crazy amount with a major lack of reasons and thoughts of your own. Simply saying its ok is not good enofe to make a point. Your not helping the Ele community, the GW2 community, and the Anet devs them self. Its being an enabler mind set and it tends to cause more harm then good.
I’m not defending ANet per se. I’m objecting to poorly aimed criticism. I have 10+ years of experience in game development and while I’m not a game designer myself I’ve learned a lot for years of work and friendship with actual game designers. Please don’t take this personally, but I find the vast majority of the players have unrealistic expectations about the game design. The complaint about the autoattacks is a nice example. As a game designer, you don’t want to make the autoattacks very good. The reason being, if your autoattack is good your other skills will feel useless, leading to very boring 1-1-1-1-…. gameplay. See Revenant underwater combat for instance. As a game designer your job isn’t to make every skill powerful, it’s to make sure the resulting gameplay is fun.
Well no boons and boon duration has realty make specialized not as big of a thing or at least when it comes to supporting with these powerful boons. Condi clear is more specialized then reisctace as a boon.
Boon duration is a specialization on its own. You give up a lot to maximize it. On the topic of cleanse vs resistance, these are just two separate ways to counter condis. And the thing is, ele is a weird pick even for cleanse, even though it is possible to do so. In WvW you need cleanse on the front line, where an ele doesn’t really belong to IMO. I mean, sure, you can go Minstrel auramancer and survive it, but what’s the point? The front line already has guards and they have cleanses on their own. And you can heal better from the back line with a staff and water fields.
Its not there a lot on the ele kit that is very out dated the only real updates applied to it has been cdr an explication bug fixes. You still not address the real problem that one skill that dose nothing but dmg and that it on a water atument something that is know for soft cc or heals/support.
Ele skills are fine. You keep complaining about one specific skill which is autoattack. Just because staff auto heals doesn’t mean every water auto ever has to. There are plenty of autos in the game which do nothing but damage. Water is niche attunement anyway. If anything, I’d complain about Piercing Shards, which gives a sizable damage boost in said niche attunement. But it’s just nitpicking, because it’s just a minor trait and the game – again – is full of quirky minors that aren’t really useful.
That mind set is why ele is always going to be this over specialized class when it should be a jack of all trades class. The reasoning behind why most of its high end effects are not that powerfully as say the more “specialized” classes yet these classes tend to be more able to do every thing with most builds.
No build can do everything. Not on a nearly decent level, in any case. Jack-of-all-trades builds aren’t good at everything, more like equally bad at everything. That’s why every class should be able to specialize in something. Ele isn’t “overly” specialized. It’s as specialized as any other class, really.
Ele IS the outdated class that is balanced for 2013 not 2017 that is the intentions and the defining use of the class.
Pure nonsense.
This build is my all in support clear build and it works to a point but you must put every thing you have into running clears to make it viable for group play in wvw. The thing is a rev can use 1 skill and be significant more useful on many levels with minimal build.
Have you considered that this might actually be intentional? You’re trying to counter condies with a class that has no access to resistance. Let me phrase it in another way – you’re trying to compete in a field where another class is strong and ele is weak. Why? Use the strengths of the ele to make it effective. You can focus on either healing or damage, both make you an asset in WvW.
Turning quality content into yet another farm? It’s a pretty easy decision which side I am going to support.
Anecdotal evidence. 100% of the pugs I’ve been in failed Arah. I’ve done it with guildies, wouldn’t try it ever with pugs again.
However, there’s a flaw in your argument. That is, that challenge is not the only alternative to rewards as a motivator. Challenge only extends the half-life of content for a subset of the whole player-base. There are a lot of other motivations to play MMO’s: being social; relaxing after a hard day at work; power fantasies; and immersion being some.
And you absolutely can’t relax or be social anywhere else, except in a dumbed-down version of the most challenging content has to offer. Right?
The question I’d ask, and I’ve asked it a lot in the GW2 forums, is, “Why does every bit of content and every reward have to be accessible to a particular group’s preferences?”
The content in such a large game is targeted toward different groups, with different preferences. Meaning there will always be content designed for specific players which appears inaccessible to others. Like raids appeal to me but PvP doesn’t. The difference is, I accept that and don’t complain on the forums why there is no story-mode PvP.
(edited by Feanor.2358)
Nothing requiring the silly SAB pls, kthxbye.
Therefore, it is not reasonable to ask for a mode of raids which misses their whole point. Namely, being challenging content.
Why not? After all, that’s their only point for you. Other people might be (and often, in fact are) interested in them for completely different reasons.
In the end, challenge, etc. are just sideshows. The main point of any content in this game is the same – to keep people playing.
Here’s an interesting thing – people keep repeating content for two reasons.
1. Challenge
2. Rewards
Everything else is a drive to play the content once and maybe revisit it once or twice after long time, but doesn’t really keep people playing it.
So if you’re not after the challenge, you’re after the rewards, yes?
Please point out how is the number of people relevant to how challenging you find the content? If anything, dropping the number of people down makes it more challenging. It’s true for raids, fractals, dungeons, even open-world group events. I trust you can find the challenge just for you even if you find raids too challenging. Therefore, it is not reasonable to ask for a mode of raids which misses their whole point. Namely, being challenging content.
1. Quickness that improves cast speed instead of just movement.
So, normal Quickness?
“Easy mode challenging content”. Am I the only one who sees a problem with that?
Do you really thing that the same difficulty is the same level of challenge to everyone? I’m pretty sure that there are players, for example, for whom raids aren’t a challenge at all. As well as those that would be challenged even with a lower-difficulty version.
The thing is, those who would be challenged by a lower-difficulty version can get the very same level of challenge in existing content like fractals.
Ooh, easy mode raids exist already?
“Easy mode challenging content”. Am I the only one who sees a problem with that? What is going to be next, story mode PvP?
(edited by Feanor.2358)
The point is, if you claim the game needs challenging content, then said price is inevitable.
Well, i don’t claim it. I never asked for any challenging content at all. I was perfectly fine with the difficulty of pre-HoT game.
Besides, it’s not really inevitable. The price is a direct result not of the challenge level, but of the fact that it’s a group content, and a 10-man at that. With 5-man content the cost would be much, much smaller, for example. It would also be much smaller if there were no incentives to bring in players that didn’t really like that type of content, and/or if it was less time-consuming.
Well, it was a reply to someone who did.
Besides, you’re wrong. 100 CM is 5-man content and it has pretty much the same accessibility issues. Being 10-man slightly compounds that, but it also lets the devs to design more interesting encounters, so it’s a price I’m happy to pay.
No, raids don’t target the same audience as T1-T2 fractals and dungeons do.
Yes, I was complaining about the quantity of new instanced casual content.
Would you say there is enough content when all raids would get deleted?
I don’t think low-tier fractals are actually meant for anyone, except as a stepping stone toward T4. As for dungeons, Arah explorable says “Hi”.
Considering that’s exactly how raiders got their raids, it seems to be a really good idea, to be truthful. It’s definitely better than just letting it go, because the latter has exactly zero chance of accomplishing anything.
Except asking for type of content which didn’t exist isn’t the same as asking for content which already exists but you cannot be bothered to enjoy it because you already played it once.
(edited by Feanor.2358)
The point is, if you claim the game needs challenging content, then said price is inevitable. The game cannot do anything to offset it, only you can and your actions ultimately only affect yourself.
If you claim the game needs to be casual everywhere, that’s another story. However, these game exist and they have names like “Candy crush saga”.
No, you were complaining about the quantity of new fractals. The quantity is fine. Plus, raids are exactly like that content, except better.
Well, I am refering to casual teams and even my first post acknowledged that there is open world content which is pretty decent content for singleplayers.
Sure it is the choice of players to not play solo in open world and to favour teamcontent when they want to play a MMO. That’s why I recommended those players to buy another MMO in my first post in this topic.
For Anet it is a problem to loose too many players. They can’t just say “then just leave the game” (me) or “suck it up” (you).
Repeating something over and over again doesn’t make it true. Like stating the open world isn’t group content. Can it be played with a group? Yes, it can. Are there community events hosted in the open world? Yes, there are. So no, it’s not content for “singleplayers”.
And let me repeat myself – you’re having vastly unrealistic expectations. You expect frequent new content aimed at team players which isn’t designed to be repeated over and over again. Won’t happen. Waaaay to expensive to create. I can’t really think of any worse business model in the game dev sector. Nobody gives a feline that some players want this when they aren’t going to pay enough to cover the costs.
Almost no one is advocating for the removal of challenging content. I, for one, believe the game needs more of it.
But not at the cost of accessibility. Challenging content should be an extension of what the game is – not an entirely separate game mode made for a small percentage of the game’s population. At that point, they might as well be making two completely separate games.
There is no accessibility cost. The game offers exactly the same tools for accessing raids as it does for accessing any other content.
The same argument is often used to justify the wealth disparity in RL. In both cases it’s not really convincing.
It doesn’t have to be convincing when it’s true. Let’s not derail the topic into a society debate and focus on the game.
When you think about it, what is the accessibility issue? It’s being difficult to find a group. Why is it difficult? Because groups tend to reject players who don’t meet their criteria. What does that mean when you compare it to other content, where it is very easy to find a group and not get rejected? It means the players care more about your performance. In low tier fractals you can enter with literally anything and nobody would care. For one simple reason – you’ll still faceroll the content regardless of your builds. Up the challenge a bit and players start asking questions. Up it a little further and they start requiring specific roles and builds in their group.
You cannot have challenging content and keep the same level of “friendliness” of the community. I’m putting quotes there because it’s wrong to count that as friendliness. It really is a simple indifference. The more challenging the content becomes, the less indifferent and the less tolerant toward inefficiencies the people become. In this sense, accessibility will always be the cost of challenging content. However, that cost only applies if you’re unwilling to adapt. In other words, it is only ever an issue if you make it one yourself. It’s all in your mind.
Almost no one is advocating for the removal of challenging content. I, for one, believe the game needs more of it.
But not at the cost of accessibility. Challenging content should be an extension of what the game is – not an entirely separate game mode made for a small percentage of the game’s population. At that point, they might as well be making two completely separate games.
There is no accessibility cost. The game offers exactly the same tools for accessing raids as it does for accessing any other content.
I think the biggest issue people have with raids is that they don’t take place in another dimension but are right there on the world map. Exploring them is not an easy possibility and it feels like you are locked out of part of the game world. Especially as these raid maps are fairly huge and take place right on the world map. It’s like a hard living world story episode that is hard to get into.
An easymode would let them uncover the world map more.
1. Go to LA Aerodrome.
2. Ask for a cleared instance.
3. Explore the map for as long as you’d like.
There, I implemented that for you. Not even patch required! Am I good or what?
There are quite a lot of veteran players playing since release (or even GW1 veterans) which play “casually” and will never enter raids.
And that’s their own choice. There’s hardly anyone to blame for it except themselves alone, is there? Certainly not the game devs, which have created excellent content I’ve been casually enjoying for the past one year. And please quit trying to portray a game which has no other content beside raids. It’s ridiculous.
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Don’t know about PvP, in raids and fractals it is still solid, provided you can play it. Build variety is okay.
Mainly I’ve been open world roaming, problems start when active defenses are burnt and I’m just not hitting hard enough. Though recently tried a change to one of my paths and it seems to punch better. Staff is alright at least so far the one I’m most comfortable with. My gear is off, but I really want to iron out the class before I make another gear set. Commanders is what I’m running, still not sure which Rune is best, but Scholar seems to work well. Anyway here’s the build and any advice is welcome. If I can find a build I’m comfortable with it will let me dust the toon off more often.
For PvE in general, open world included:
1. One with Fire is useless, even more so on staff. Pyromancer’s Training is soooo much better, as it reduces your fire cooldowns, which are your primary sources of damage.
2. Aeromancer’s Training is not worth using with a staff. Pick either of the two other choices here, they are both good.
3. Invigorating Torrents aren’t worth taking over Harmonous Conduit. Both the damage modifier and the stability are more useful.
4. You don’t need any more defensive skills than you already have on staff. You have lots of strong CC (water 4, air 5, earth 2, 4 & 5, earth overload, Glyph of Storms in Eath), and good cleanses (water 5, water overload). You also have additional on-demand healing through blasting water fields (water 2 → 3/5). You really should be running Glyph of Storms. It’s either insane CC or very strong damage, depending on your attunement. The rest of your utilities aren’t that important, though I recommend using Signet of Fire for the extra punch. You could grab “Feel the burn!” for the on-demand aura (and fury).
5. Following up, once you get comfortable with using your weapon skills for your survival you won’t need defensive stats on gear either. You may consider using Marauder’s as stepping stone toward full Berserker’s.
Just logged in and got mail! Thanks! \o/
Same here.
/fifteen symbols required
My $0.02:
Dagger mainhand – it’s OK, though not my favorite weapon. A bit bland.
Scepter – love it.
Staff – love it.
Dagger offhand – it’s fun to play, was my favorite pre-HoT.
Warhorn – love it.
Focus – Meh. Too defensive, it’s not for me.
Why should I be forced to do a part of the game I don’t want to do to get my legendary short bow?
The same reason every legendary is forcing you do to some WvW, some map completion and either some dungeons or some HoT map grind. To make you experience more of the game. It’s a solid approach.
You can safely assume the upcoming legendaries will use the same approach as the last few. There will be new precursor shards so you can’t craft these, but you can craft curios.
Also it’s not a 100% bet, but the system seems to work so I find it unlikely for ANet to change it any time soon.
You’re vastly exaggerating the difficulty of raids. The first completely new group I organized hit their heads in the wall for maybe 2 hrs before killing VG for the first time. And the experience was VERY rewarding, exactly because of the feeling you finally succeeded at something hard. Take that away and it becomes just your average “meh, yet another boss, yawn”.
Except if they want to play as a team, interact skills and so on. At this point open world sucks. Except if Anet introduces 5-10 player open world maps – which then would be instanced content again.
Why, is there a rule forbidding casual parties in the open world? Asking because if there is one, I’ve broken it on multiple occasions.
Yup, they really should have made cleanses more of an individual use than aoe blasting.
It would seem unfair to be able to AoE spam condis but not be able to AoE cleanse them. It would also make a really boring meta where everyone is forced to run full condi cleanse. Condi, resistance and cleanse are fine as they are.
Elite Specializations - were a terrible idea
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Feanor.2358
Is it totally unviable to not use the elite spec?
Depends on the class and application. Condi ranger doesn’t use elite and is among the best damage dealers in PvE. Core guardian is basically meta in WvW. But warrior for instance isn’t really played without its elite to my knowledge.
For PvE, if you’re not aiming at high-end content, the weapon choice is entirely up to you. Everything is “good enough”. Staff is also still very strong option in this game mode (and also in WvW).
Oh come on, part of the stated design goals was that this is a content most players should be unable to run. Not “not interested in”, but “unable”. Yes, they were designed to shut out majority of the playerbase. How well they are fulfilling that goal is a separate issue (and one we apparently don’t agree on), but the goal itself is not up for argument.
Game crashes if person is unworthy?
No need. Person dies if person doesn’t git gud is enough of a barrier.