Guild Wars 2

UrMom.4205:

Fiontar.4695:

Each location can only be looted once per day, per account, so why even bother having them disappear at all? Seems like they just love being contrary to the Manifesto and core design of the game in recent months…

yeah i agree they should have them set up like mining nodes, where you see it and can get it without having to worry about beating people there.

Exactly. I wish they would think of these things by default.

Each location can only be looted once per day, per account, so why even bother having them disappear at all? Seems like they just love being contrary to the Manifesto and core design of the game in recent months…

Latinkuro.9420:

Evolut.2398:

Buttt..there is a market for them, just because the items you craft themselves are account bound doesn’t mean you can’t buy the crystals to make said item…

LOL, the charged crystal itself IS account bound
it doesn’t flood the market, it doesn’t make you any money at all so why this 1 per day crap ?
This is solely aimed at making this game a 1 character player per account only !!!

Hell, I would be happy if it was 5 crystals per day but, one is a bit outrageous even for a time sink style armor.

I agree on this. It’s part of a very evident, self destructive strategy to make alts and additional character slots pointless. Alts are what have kept me in the game for over 1600 hours, but all these once per account mechanics are making playing more than one or two toons pointless and I can see a parting of the ways between me and the game if they don’t find a way to reverse course on this.

Paul Belz.7351:

Hey guys,

In order to earn this achievement, you will have to hit someone with the offensive skills. You can’t just fire them off into the ether willy nilly.

I got the achievement, but I never saw any actual indication that my attacks did anything to anyone. I really wish that element was either much more clear, or just wasn’t part of the activity.

ColinJohanson.2394:

We’ve said it a few times before, but I want to just re-iterate we’ve heard folks feedback on this and will be doing a much larger mix of permanent, recurring (content that can occur again in the future), and more world impacting releases as it relates to living world in the second half of the year. There will still absolutely be some amount of temporary, in particular story-driven moments to help drive the narrative forward. You’ll also see some of the content previously noted as “temporary” return permanently to the game in the 2nd half of the year.

Three additional notes ->

• As we recently announced, we’re up to four living world teams now, which means they will have a much longer development cycle later this year to build more polished content, and content that can be more impactful.

• The Living World teams are only a small chunk of the total developers at ArenaNet, we’ll be going into details on what many of those other teams will be doing in a blog later this month.

• We also have teams working on much longer term projects, which we will discuss when they are closer to arrival.

We’ve said all of this before, but I think it’s good to just put that message out more frequently so everyone understands where we’re going. Thanks very much for all the feedback folks, as always we continue to listen to your feedback and course correct as we try new things in the live MMO space.

Well, I’m glad you are listening. I’m also happy to hear that the LS teams are only a small portion of Arenanet and that a large chunk of the studio is working on “Long Term Projects”. Your statement a few months ago that no one was working on an expansion and that the studio was focused on Living Story really set the stage for a lot of ire in the community.

IMO, with rare exception, the LS events have been a waste of development resources. I hope they will become something better in the future, but at least I have some hope knowing that only a portion of the studio has been wasting development resources, not the entire studio.

You were right when you originally announced continual roll outs of new DEs to the world would be the focus of free content development and that this would make the game world feel more alive. Too bad you nixxed that plan to do LS, which has done little to make the game world feel alive and delivered even less on story.

Let us all hope that the portion of the studio not working on LS will pull the game’s bacon out of the fire, as it’s pretty depressing to see how little has been accomplished on the world PvE front as we approach the 1 year anniversary of the launch of the game.

So, I finally make it to the top of the Sanctum and try to enter Sanctum Sprint. Instead, it sends me to Legacy of Foefire sPvP map. Ummm…. That’s a pretty annoying bug…

When have you ever seen an MMO where the vendor price provided the actual floor for such a large portion of items in the game? Usually the vendor prices are a small fraction of the market value. This is not the case here. That higher tier mats/goods are often cheaper than lower tier shows exactly how broken the economy is.

The problem is that the exchange rate for silk scraps and thick leather with the new traders was based on the pre-patch prices. Even at the depressed prices, they are not the most efficient mats to exchange, so don’t expect much new demand for either.

If “the economist” had been thinking, it might have been a good opportunity to readjust mat prices to reflect the given tier. Of course, that would require a willingness to actually manage the economy, rather than just grasping onto the ideology that a completely free market, free of regulation, is the holy grail of economics that can’t even be tainted when tasked with managing a closed virtual market where no real work was done prior to release to ensure that demand/supply would naturally direct prices into appropriate tiers.

IMO, if a game is to have an economist, a primary responsibility should be the fine tuning of supply and demand in order to create a sustainable economy where costs reflect power/quality with out prices for many goods being hopelessly depressed due to a badly thought out strategy for scarcity.

Recipes for armor/weapons/trinkets at different tiers should have been fine tuned in the opening months to push prices towards appropriate goals. Gluts of resources and items should also be regularly addressed via short or long term Mystic Forge recipes tailored specifically towards achieving desired results.

We saw this with Butter and one or two other mats that were made too abundant via mat containers/bags, but this tool seems to have been completely abandoned.

GW2 has one of the most broken economies I’ve ever seen in an MMO, which is even harder to fathom because it actually has a dedicated economist who is supposed to ensure otherwise.

The cakes are a way of selling power via gems. The cakes are overpowered. The cheapest way to get the cakes is to have the recipe and craft them. Having the recipe also provides the exclusive ability to become a manufacturer and seller of those cakes and earn profit.

It’s not quite the direct selling of an exclusive stat boost, but it’s a little too close to that for comfort.

Another step towards the slippery slope is providing a level up in BLCs. Now you can literally buy yourself a near instant level 80 character if you buy enough BLCs. The rarity of the level up will be an important factor in judging how big a deal this will be. Players can already speed level to by buying gems, trading for gold and leveling all the crafting professions to 400, but it still takes several hours to manage all the crafting. These level up tickets just require a load of money and the ability to double click.

It’s pretty simple truth that they should not have leaked the info, period. No ifs, ands or buts about it. It’s not about whining, it’s just clearly something that never should have been leaked, but due to the leak allowed those privy to the leak to make a ton of gold.

ANet has a fit if players discover a half reasonable way to farm gold through game play, but they seem to love that the economy provides ample opportunities for the rich to become richer and benefit from insider information.

Rising Dusk.2408:

I imagine John Smith is a millionaire in-game in terms of gold. He knows all these things before any of the patches go live. I’m sure he sold his Crystalline Dust when he could, bought his <INSERT INVESTMENT HERE> low / sold it super high, and so on. That all said, it’s just how the cookie crumbles. I know you said that your case doesn’t really apply to ANet employees, but really, he’s probably the real winner here.

This wouldn’t surprise me. his management of the economy only makes any sense if his main focus is to profit off his decisions in game! J/K, maybe?

I’m sure we all have some pet peeves with this addition, let’s get them all in one place.

For me:

The Recipes.

Why do so many of them have a Level 80 requirement to learn the recipe? Crafting has never been tied to character level, just crafting level. What is the point of this, other than to force pre-level 80 characters to waste bank space on storing these?

Speaking of wasting space, why even have recipes for the finished goods? Why not just have recipes for the inscriptions/insignias and make the items discoverable? People who might want to try to craft these for profit can just buy them off the TP if they don’t get what they are looking for from the boxes, it’s not like having all these individual recipes is going to make the ability to craft them sparse enough to inflate prices of the finished goods!

Economy. On the plus side, the ability to trade basic crafting mats for boxes may help clear some of the glut for those resources on the TP. On the minus side, you had the perfect opportunity to readjust the value of some of the severely undervalued higher tier basic mats by making them by far the best value at pre-patch exchange rates. Instead, the exchange rate simply reflects the pre-patch selling price for those mats. Long term fixes to the issue would require tinkering with crafting recipes to increase demand, but you had the perfect opportunity to jump start desired corrections and ignored it? WTH guys!?!?!?

I’m sure I’ll find more, but these are just super obvious and super annoying.

They should add a second check box for the back piece, “Persistence”. When this is checked, your actually back piece will supersede any Engie kit graphics. If visibility is checked off and persistence is on, then no back piece, including Engie kit packs, will display.

It would be nice if they were a lot less random. I’d get an Elixir that sometimes doesn’t produced the desired results, but a 1/3 chance of getting what you want/need is just annoying.

Maybe an 66% chance to get the primary. Or even a guaranteed primary and a chance at a secondary.

They should just make Conjured Weapons work similar Engineer kits. Little to no cooldown on activating the skill. (Engie has no real cooldown on kits. In order to keep CW in line with attunement swapping, maybe up to an 8 second CD would be appropriate, starting when you de-activate the CW). An internal cooldown on how often the skill can drop a copy of the weapon on the ground equal to the current skill CD. When the CW is active, clicking the CW utility skill again de-activates it. Consider the ability to drop a copy of the weapon for others as compensation for not having the equivalent of Engineer toolbelt skills. (If no one else picks it up, the drop gives you the occasional ability to switch out of the CW, use other weapon skills, then quickly jump back into the CW). Done.

If this was done, it might actually make us the “Jack of All Trades” they pretend we are and the lowest HP/ Lowest Armor/ Medicore Damage handicaps the profession has might begin to be justified.

Raven.9603:

oZii.2864:

The counter that some will say is that RTL nerfed affected D/D eles that didn’t build bunker.

Of course it did, and thats not fair. But realistically, how are you going to only nerf RTL for bunkers? If I could change RTL, I would increase the radius and make it still count as a hit on evades/invuln’s, to make sure the cooldown isn’t set to 40 if used offensively. Maybe knock “miss” timer down to 30 seconds. 40 seconds is overkill considering they nerfed the healing power scaling with evasive arcana, which is where most of the group heal came from.

I play every class except warrior, so if we’re talking about things that arent fair, look at rangers. All common pets for all specs nerfed 30-50% just because of 1 bunker spec, basically breaking the entire class without compensation. Shortbow turned to crap just to make longbow look nicer by comparison. Imagine they gutted every offhand dagger skill just to make focus more attractive?

Ele’s have some good things. RTL nerf sucks but its not the end of the world.

These issues are about “who has ANet Kittened the most”. Clueless on Ranger Balance doesn’t make them any less clueless on Elementalist balance. Instead of trying to excuse one set of nerfs because they aren’t as bad as another set of nerfs, why don’t you just point out that their approach to balancing Elementalists and Rangers raise serious questions about their ability to balance the game?

I see the mix of nerfed professions and OP professions as a whole and when judged on the whole, I think they just have no real idea what they are doing.

Dividing players against other players is one way bad developers get away with it. If they can make players of half the professions fairly happy, then they can tick off players of the other half and see the 50/50 split as an indication of how balanced their approach is.

I personally hate that they seem to have no clue on balancing my preferred profession, but I hate even more the general fact that they have shown no ability to make all the professions fun to play, while maintaining reasonable balance between the professions. I see the bigger issues and worry about the future of the game, but the way they force us to chose one character to progress via Ascended gear makes balance issues with one’s profession of choice feel personal.

Balance issues can be bad for any MMO. Ascended gear and the Laurel system just amplifies the impact exponentially if a player finds that “balance” changes have rendered their profession “un-fun” or un-playable. I have 11 level 80s across two accounts. If it was as simple as just switching characters when ever the Arenanet “winds of balance” over compensate in one direction or another, the impact wouldn’t be nearly as severe.

I believe that each time you are downed you receive a debuff to your downed HP, which is not displayed on the UI, does stack, but does dissipate over time. Basically, the more you are downed in a short period of time, the less downed health you have on each subsequent down.

I’m not sure how long these last or what percentage per stack, but it’s possible this might be what you have noticed.

Kromulous.4291:

Krosslite.1950:

A lot of people keep mentioning the last ten months. Shame on you.
This has nothing to do with the state of Anet at this time. This is a recent development for them as this game comes into it own. To compare what they now promise to what has come out before should never be done. They have been trying something new and as of now is not how they thought two months ago let alone at the time they launched the game.
SO STOP.

They’ve been talking about “focusing on the core gw2 experience” ever since they finished up the Halloween event. So, past eight months then, sorry. And don’t shame us for saying something you don’t want to hear. Anet’s made it clear time and time again the reason why we haven’t seen any big additions to the game yet is because they’re focusing on improving what’s already in-game. The question, what do we have to show for it after 8 months? Comparatively little considering the timespan. (10 months in reality if you think Anet took those two months off and lounged around before figuring out what they wanted to do.)

Exactly. We have very little to show for it. I assume that most of the developers are doing honest work on what tasks have been given them. I don’t think the lack of productivity is because people aren’t working, I think it’s because some key people in charge of the “big picture” have completely failed at taking the incredible core GW2 experience and progressing it.

I fully expected that after launch, they would continue to flesh out the new paradigm that GW2 has created in MMO design and would make additional progress towards fulfilling the Manifesto. Dynamic Events are the most important element of the new paradigm and the most important element in furthering the manifesto. It’s easy to see how the concept could and should improve as Arenanet gets better at making them and creating more complex chains that have a bigger observable impact on the game world.

There is a big problem though. ANet seems to have gotten out of the business of building new Dynamic Event content and building on the incredible foundation they established for this form of content production.

I think there is another failure that comes back around to why they may have decided that a truly living world via efficient DE production wasn’t worth the time and effort. Level scaling isn’t good enough to actually ensure that all content in the game is challenging for a level 80 character. This has provided an excuse for ANet to abandon the promise that doing lower level content would still provide at level loot almost as efficiently as when doing at level content.

Lower level zones are a lot more viable for a higher level character in GW2 than in any other MMO, but the difficulty curve needs to be tightened even further and the reward curve needs to be drastically modified to better reward down-scaling.

It all comes back to the manifesto and the distinctive design decisions that made this game so incredible and imbued it with such promise.

Perhaps the most devastating issue is that it seems that key people currently in charge of GW2 either don’t comprehend what made GW2 special, or always disagreed with those key design elements and now are dismantling the work of smarter, more talented people, or the task of furthering the manifesto and core foundation of the game is just utterly beyond them.

I know of at least one very key developer who has not been seen nor heard from since shortly after launch. Can this really come down to the loss of one person? Or, is it also a byproduct of a botched restructuring of the company for post-launch development that has left too many people that “don’t get it” making important decisions with out enough “adult supervision”?

It was sort of a miracle that a game like this that bucked stale, established MMO design philosophies made it to market with out old school thinkers in the studio bucking attempts to mess with established design rules. It seems like many may never have actually made the paradigm jump and now that they have more power within the studio, we are seeing the sad slide back into old school thinking.

Jarek.2430:

Grevender.9235:

interesting use of staff, I enjoyed the video
imho ‘tho that’s viable in sPvP only: in WvWvW you’d get roflsteamed
thanks for sharing

There are many viable builds for Staff in WvW; we all have the same weapon skills. In WvW he would be with 5 or more so no he wouldnt be ‘roflsteamed’.

Let me clarify. There may be WvW staff builds viable for running with a group/zerg. There are no staff builds that are viable for situation where you get caught alone. We used to be able to get away, so even though it was always very risky to attempt a 1v1, we could at least avoid being a free kill. That’s no longer the case.

It’s looking like the best we can do is have a S/D or D/D build with a trait point distribution that makes it viable to switch to Staff when the situation allows.

No weapon swap would make sense if attunements actually provided real situational adaptability. They don’t. They’ve become additional hoops to jump through in order to string together rotations that require twice as many button presses than other professions just to produce mediocre results.

I’d love if each attunement actually provided more tangible and focused benefits, more like a stance change from other MMOs. Also, shorter cooldowns on the #4 and #5 skills, so that you could spend most time in a two attunement rotation, with additional attunements used situationally.

Most professions/builds in the game can spend a majority of their time in one weapon, using the second weapon situationally. Some require more active and continuous swapping back and forth. Elementalists pretty much require rotating through three or four attunements just as part of a standard skill rotation. Like I said, attunements have just become hoops to jump through, rather than actually providing an ability to adapt one’s role based on the evolving situation during combat.

It’s a waste of potential for the profession that things have devolved this way. It also shatters any justification for the severe handicaps the profession has based on the perceived benefit of adaptability that attunements supposedly grant us.

I agree with others, in function Engineer is a lot closer to what Elementalist could have been and should have been. Kits essentially give them the ability to chose the combination of “attunements” they have available in a given build and kits are truly situational.

If I could change only one thing about Elementalist, I would allow the Elementalist to have two weapon sets, with an out of combat toggle to select which weapon set will be associated with each attunement. Then we might have in combat versatility worth talking about. (e.g. I select Staff and Scepter/Dagger as my weapons and I decide to associate staff with Fire and Water and Scepter/Dagger with Air and
Earth).

1. Arenanet forgot how to make new DEs for the game world. Two months left for Colin to meet his stated goal of 2x to 3x the number of DEs in the world by the end of year 1, or 800 a month over the next two months. Probably won’t get 1% of that.

2. RNG gem store boxes. Obnoxiously long odds, little consolation, ripping off big spenders, rather than offering actual value. Entire Gem Store has been a waste of potential. Expected dozens of skins for direct sale by now…

3. Arenanet can not properly develop the professions in the game. Variety of builds and the fun quotient for each profession have diminished, rather than grown over the last 10 months.

Summed up as one problem: Arenanet 2013 can’t hold a candle to 2007-2012 Arenanet and much potential for this game has been squandered as a result. Loss of key people? Inability to adapt to restructuring? I don’t know, but the productivity gap is massive and concerning.

Something does seem to be wrong. BL Salvage Kits still produce as much as they used to. Master or Mystic Forge kits seem to produce about half of what they used to. I’m too broke to test lesser quality kits.

I’ve always had fun and felt capable running a D/D build for PvE. I haven’t played the build for a couple months, so I’m not sure how recent changes may have effected D/D, but I always found I could kill things fast, deal with groups of mobs and maintained good survivability through positioning, mobility and evasion.

I also have given up on Staff for WvW. We are still great in a zerg, but where as before I could move across the field and usually avoid confrontations as I tried to catch up with a group, with the nerfs if you are caught with out friends, you are plain and simple a free kill.

I’m now running a 0-30-0-30-10 S/D build for WvW. I can actually kill people now and appear to have better survivability and escape-ability. I can still switch to staff when aiding in a siege, until the walls are clear of foes and siege weapons, with only minimal loss of AoE and utility vs. my previous Staff-centric build. The rest of the time I run S/D and am having fun doing so. (I’m not even very good at the build yet and still find it more capable than the staff build I had experience and comfort with, which is sad).

I just don’t see Staff as viable anymore as a primary weapon to build around, unless you are always with others. In WvW, switching to staff for hitting things up on walls is worth the effort and can mesh with some of the solid S/D builds, but the versatile, Staff focused Elementalist is dead.

I was running a 10-0-20-20-20 Staff build for WvW before the patch. Nice AoE, but very weak if caught in the open field. Cantrip build gave me enough escape ability to allow me to avoid contacts I knew I couldn’t win, or attempt engagements I thought I might have a chance at and get away if things went wrong. I found it a good balance in exchange for providing a support role to a group or zerg.

The patch killed the escape part of the build, which was a shame because the minor buffs to Staff skill flow made weapon skill use more enjoyable.

I’ve since switched to a 0-30-0-30-10 S/D build and I’m enjoying it a lot, even if I’m not very good at it yet. I can actually kill opponents 1v1, (or occasionally 1v2) now, I have better survivability and I can escape when need be. I can even switch to staff for wall/gate sieges with out too much loss vs. my previous staff build, while running S/D the rest of the time or even once the walls have been cleared of siege/foes.

I’m still learning all the skills and rotations. It can be a little frustrating going from a build where you could just act and react with out having to actually think about which buttons to press, to having to remember which skills are where, giving conscious thought to every button press. However, being inexperienced at this build is still yielding much better results and much more fun that the build that lost it’s luster due to nerfage.

S/D builds viable in the current meta can and do work, but people coming from different builds/weapon sets just need to remember that it will take a little time to become adept. It’s worth the effort, even if your fingers feel drunk and your mind a bit sluggish as you learn to adapt.

I am worried that S/D will be next on the nerf list and I also hate that ANet can not seem to broaden build choice with these patches, almost inevitably killing at least as many builds as they make viable. That part is getting very old, so I hope moving forward they will stop stepping unnecessarily on viable, (or even barely viable) builds and will work on adding variety, rather than just moving the goal post around the field.

Since launch, we have seen features and improvements to WvW and sPvP. I’m happy for those, but they were needed features and not something one would expect an MMO developer to save for a paid expansion.

Looking at actual playable content, the past 10 months has been rather sorrowful in that regard. I’d actually rather pay $35-$50 a year for an actual expansion’s worth of content, than see resources wasted on a ten month program that has produced 1/20th of an expansion’s worth of content. Things are compounded by the fact that most of it has been temporary and very little of it has led to permanent changes to the game world.

If the last two updates are indicative of what to expect moving forward, then things aren’t really any better, they just provide an illusion of productivity by providing an update every fortnight. It’s fast-food content that provides no real nutritional value and leaves you feeling hungry.

They can’t call it Living World content, because none of it makes the world feel alive. They shouldn’t call it Living Story content, because there is never enough actual story. (We really should get 3-5 Story Instances at least on par with the story and game play experience provided by the Personal Story with each installment).

It really feels like fluff content slapped together by a studio that has forgotten how to produce content. I mean, look at the amazing amount of content of all sorts the game offered at alunch and the massive, detailed worldspace it inhabits. Arenanet clearly knew how to harness it’s employees and direct the project in a way that produced an unprecedented amount of at launch content for an MMO. What happened to that studio?

ANet developed over 1600 Dynamic Events in five years, while also building everything else that went into the game. If they could have produced even 300 new DEs around the world over the last ten months, we would have a true Living World. Instead, DEs are suddenly “too hard” and we get this Living Story kitten instead.

Potential? Squandered. Future? Uncertain…

The problem if you compare Elementalist to Guardian is that Guardian can offer top notch support, while having incredible survivability and better damage output than the frail, pew-pew Elementalist.

I don’t think the Elementalist needs to be the best at anything, but for a supposedly versatile profession to be of any actual value, it needs to at least be good at the roles it attempts to fill. The profession has the lowest HP and Armor combination in the game and now they are nerfing what survivability we could achieve via mobility. Fro all the negatives they are handing the profession, you’d think we were actually powerful, when in reality we are rather pitiful.

I really do think this has nothing to do with how powerful the profession is, if it was the nerfs that have accumulated since launch would never have been necessary. This is about the devs not wanting a profession that isn’t completely predictable to them. Versatility might mean that the players discover builds and strategies that the developers didn’t intend and, apparently, some devs don’t like knowing that the players might be smarter than them.

When unforeseen synergies or strategies are actually OP, you tune them. You don’t just nerf the profession away because you fear unpredictability.

Durzlla.6295:

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

Durzlla.6295:

Mek.2947:

Caffynated.5713:

Baladir.2736:

Again, a situation where skills are put to the wrong use and then used to invalidate those skills and indeed the entire class.

Durzlla.6295:

Does no one in this thread know how to use a staff? This is just sad….

Show us, oh glorious PvP masters. Teach the peasants how staff is an amazing weapon and isn’t a free kill like every other person in the entire game thinks it is.

http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm

Here’s a free video capture program if you don’t have one. Show me your incredible use of staff.

Yes, and while you’re at it, show us how DD eles can escape any class with 40+ second cooldowns.

shrugs I’ll let someone else do the DD escape I play staff, but I’ll get some PvP footage once I can get my group together for PvP (tried to get them rallied for tonight but 2 are MIA ATM, hopefully I’ll have it by Thursday)

EDIT: I’ve been using Afterburner for years and never knew it was able to record…. wow i haven’t been using that to it’s full potential…

So I tried some pvp with staff as an ele and after 8 matches I died 20 times and killed 0.
My mesmer with staff 1st match I ever played most I’ve ever done with mesmer was reach lvl 6 and in my 1st match I got 15 kills and 2 deaths. Pretty sad for somebody who mains elementalist.

Well were you using the starter mesmer build? If so Congrats! you can kill people with a phantasm build! In short that means you can spawn illusions and not die before your illusions kill them yaaaaaaay go you, you showed the lowest skill floor build in the game that our high skill floor staff is worthless!! Oh wait…

Just because you can go in with one profs weapon and do decently doesn’t mean you can go in with ANY weapon on ANY prof and do decently, some weapons (such as ele staff) has a higher skill floor than others. Next you’re going to say that “Well i can do well with a Warrior GS but i don’t get anything done with a ranger GS!”

That…added nothing to the conversation. I also think it undermined the point you were trying to make, but I’m not entirely positive.

If you were saying that Mesmer is so OP that someone can just jump into PvP with the default build, (which is never a top build), with almost no experience playing a Mesmer and completely trash the performance of a Staff Ele played by someone with a lot of Ele experience, I sort of think that makes the point of those who say Staff Ele is in very sad shape.

Definitely looking forward to your unedited Staff PvP play, no need to wait to assemble a team, go hot join and let’s see how you do.

I’m guessing you unlock tiers of rewards via AP. Like others, I’m hoping it works like the Hall of Monuments unlocks, where once you unlock a skin, you have access to as many account bound copies of that skin as you want from a special vendor.

For those that don’t know, Hall of Monuments allows GW1 players to unlock various tiers of cosmetic gear and titles for use in GW2. Legacy players with a GW1 account attached to their GW2 account get an object that allows them to teleport to the Hall of Monuments instance, where there is a vendor that offers skins you’ve unlocked at no cost.

If the new system works similar to that, I’ll be very happy.

Esplen.3940:

In my personal opinion, which you may disagree with, I believe that Living Story and other temporary content are simply holiday content with no holiday tied to it.

So, with that in mind, if you are to make sure that all temporary content is permanent, why not just have Halloween and Wintersday all year round so that new players don’t miss out on those events, too?

That would be fine, holiday-like fluff content, if it wasn’t in place of real content, like the loads of new Dynamic Events Colin hyped last fall, (touted as doubling or tripling the number of DEs with in a year), which never materialized.

I think the entire Living Story strategy, based on what we’ve seen to date, has been a complete failure and absolute waste of development time. If they couldn’t produce meaningful monthly content, I don’t have much hope that twice monthly content updates will provide anything more than a cotton candy experience.

Oh, ok, I get it. People wanting dailies to not count are worried that people that play daily will earn more points than them? Huh? I never have understood the mentality of people obsessed with the fact that others might be able to earn perks more quickly than them, or get resentful if rewards are retroactive. I’m glad that my game play will be rewarded and I’ll earn what ever I earn. What others earn when and how isn’t relevant. I have the same potential to earn points as anyone else and I can’t begrudge people with more time, more focus or a more productive past earning AP.

Metatail.1306:

Remove achievement points from dailies and remove these points from total count!

Why? Disagree 100%. As veteran players complete more and more achievements, potential AP earning rate would continually dwindle if it weren’t for AP for Dailies. What would be your reason for wanting to exclude dailies?

Deneb.2697:

CD is high, but is ok..
I think that it should be 1200 range and/or it should stun foes…

something like “omg.. What is this. What happened!” lol

I like the “Stun Foes” idea. It makes sense for the skill and might almost make up for the loss of the stun break. Yes on either reduced cooldown or increased range, I wouldn’t mind both, but would be happy with two of the three suggestions making it onto the skill.

Guardian.

My Elementalist weathered all the nerfs over the past ten months, but the recent patch was the final straw.

Guardian, on the other hand, I didn’t care for much at launch, but I’ve been playing one as my second most used character for the past few months and really enjoy it.

The pendulum may swing back the other way for Elementalist, but I’d definitely say Guardian right now. It can take a little bit while leveling to start to open up builds that make the profession more fun, so stick with it and experiment with the different weapons until you find what suits you best.

I personally enjoy Greatsword and Sword/Focus for PvE, the skills with mobility are fun and it’s a capable combo. I did enjoy Scepter more recently than at launch, so you can have some ranged combat with the profession, but usually just when needed. You really need to experiment though.

That’s my advice anyway.

When the game launched, Elementalists would have been near or at the top of the list. However, the versatility and rewards for mastering the skill ceiling for the profession apparently were to great. Not OP, but too great for ANet. Nerfs since launch have removed the original flavor and versatility. The profession still has a higher than average dexterity ceiling, as their are a lot of hoops to jump through with the attunements to put together the skill rotations needed to reach mediocre results, but it’s no longer a “thinking person’s/ tactician’s” profession.

What profession then? I think that hard to answer because some professions that have rewarding routes for those who can master a high skill ceiling also have builds that are recognized as the most potent, but really don’t require a whole lot of skill. I think many players may find playing a high skill ceiling build for worse results than one that’s very straight forward a bit disappointing.

I think high skill ceiling usually implies a build/profession that requires players to learn a lot of various skill rotations and tactical skill choice/timing to turn a build that’s ok in an average player’s hands into an awesome build in the hands of someone who has mastered the intricacies.

ANet’s balance team doesn’t like that ability to exist with in their profession. The unpredictability scares them, as, apparently, does a system that rewards experience and competence with performance and power. Prime targets for nerfage into non-existence are skills or traits that allow combinations they hadn’t anticipated, with really little regard for whether or not those combinations are overpowered or not. Just the fact that players would find combos the developers didn’t deliberately design or anticipate is enough.

I also hesitate to offer suggestions, because from experience playing this game for ten months, I can tell you that if you find a build that challenges you with a high skill ceiling and rewards you for mastery, it will be nerfed in fairly short order.

I’m beginning to feel like we are all being crowd sourced to identify builds that are fun and challenging to play so that game play can systematically be rendered as mundane and mediocre as possible.

Higher predictability makes balancing a lot easier, but sort of pointless if the process of getting there removes most of the ability to have fun while playing.

Jovel.5706:

The average Guild Wars 2 account comes with 5 character slots. Back in the early days of 20s = 100 gems people bought all the bank tabs and character slots they needed, if they were smart. ;P

Currently I have 11 characters and 12 character slots. That’s 6g60s per reset if I keep all of my accounts on the platform with the chest and go to WvW to sell the shoulder pieces and just play sPvP, not leaving the platform. With 5 accounts that’ll be 3 gold.

No RNG was involved in getting those exotic shoulder pieces and they come with a superior rune of balthazar in them which is 14s in the TP right now, they also drop for any level character. If they were salvageable, that’s a potential 5 ectos and balthazar rune for free multiple times per account… for using a mesmer portal.

Yes, a mesmer portal.

Not only will the price for the rune decrease by alot, but it will hit ecto prices as well because all it takes to get up there is a simple mesmer portal instead of killing a world boss, which is just as easy, but still it’s a freaking mesmer portal trip for an exotic.

I can’t believe you people are complaining about this lol. Blame mesmer portals for this, not ArenaNet reducing the overly-generous price of 60s from an exotic shoulder piece for merchant vendors who should be broke as hell.

They could have removed runes from the shoulders, or placed a rune on them they want to drive the price down on.

I honestly hate when people try to reason that potential rewards should be calculated per account, rather than per character. Taking it further and assuming multiple accounts and the need to limit rewards based on the potential earnings of a single player is just completely absurd.

Each character has it’s own expenses and own gear needs. Each character a player finds worth playing is just another reason for that player to stick with the game. Why the heck would anyone see a problem with a person who has five accounts getting five time’s the rewards? Hell, I could have 100 accounts, does that mean thay should be worth 30 copper?

The scarey thing is that reasoning like this seems to be going on on the developer side as well.

This change just provides the latest evidence that something is not right at Arenanet. I have a feeling that if they tossed who ever decided to push the change, the future of the game would be a bit brighter.

I agree with about half of what the OP has stated. Unfortunately, that’s a higher percentage than what I agree with Arenanet on since launch. I’m too tired to respond to the points, so that will have to wait until tomorrow.

I will say I agree, though, that ANet has been wandering further and further away from the Manifesto and has indeed been falling into the same old MMO design traps. This continues to fuel my main question/concern: What the heck happened to ANet so that the studio barely resembles the studio that created this incredible game? 2013 Arenanet could never have created the GW2 that launched last August. Never, ever.

No. Ascended accessories have already forced us to focus too much on a single character, when alts could and should provide enhanced long term playability. Armors and weapons will make that issue even worse.

We never should have had Ascended anything, but hopefully ANet has seen enough to know how much of a mistake they made when they headed down that path.

You know, the concept of Cosmetic and Prestige rewards, in lieu of gear inflation, could have worked if they could have pumped out quality skins and other specials in a timely manner.

It could still work, but they’d have to add a few more artists who can actually design and produce stylish and desirable skins for it to work.

Mek.2947:

I think what annoys me more than anything about this class is that you MUST stop and fight everyone that picks a fight with you. I can’t tell you how many times in WvWvW or in sPvP I simply just want to get from point A to B, and here comes the troll Ranger, Thief, Warrior, Mesmer, Guardian, Necro, Engi that will NOT leave you alone. I can’t run away because if I do they’ll just tear me down, so I’m forced to fight. I fight and then if I’m actually winning I feel like every class has a way to disengage (but OMG RTL was overpowered cuz god forbid if we could disengage like any other class). And every other class knows it because they actively seek us out since we have no way of escaping. Our cantrips, before their nerf just simply gave us like 3 seconds of breathing room before class X goes back to two buttoning our life away. I’m speaking from the perspective of an 80 Ele and 80 Mesmer. I definitely don’t feel like I’m constantly being trolled to death on my Mesmer like I do my ele.

Maybe it’s perspective. I certainly wanted to play my ele because I like the fact that it is a class that relies on synergy on multiple ability combinations rather than hitting 2,2,2,2,2,2,2 stealth, 2,2,2,2,2 like a thief. Definitely not bored playing an ele. Just get frustrated with the little reward you get from playing it well.

I agree with this. Prior to the recent nerfs, I had actually gotten pretty good at getting away from fights I didn’t want to have. Now I’m forced to fight, even though I’m not built for 1v1. On the occasion when I actually get the upper hand, the other person can almost always get away.

My #1 skills are pretty much the only damage I can do to a fleeing/kiting opponent, but those skills are cursed with the worst auto-attack base damage in the game, made worse because I play a profession that can not afford to spec more than 25% to 33% into DPS with out being a free kill.

Baladir.2736:

Caffynated.5713:

^ auto attacks are almost the only abilities you have that will hit a moving target and they’re all poor damage.

I’m sure you really hurt the grass with your epic eruption, ice spike, lava font combo, but players just walk out of it.

Again, a situation where skills are put to the wrong use and then used to invalidate those skills and indeed the entire class.

Seems more like you are considering effectiveness against horrible opponents who will stand in AoE circles as the standard for judging the profession.

Even in MMOs where AoE nukers have incredible crowd control they tend to have extremely high DPS numbers, with the class balanced by low HP and armor. In GW2, we have the worst HP and Armor combo in the game, poor CC and mediocre, at best, damage.

Before the patch, we could at least gain some survivability through mobility. Apparently, tactical use of mobility for very modest survivability is a no-no for Elementalists now.

Apparently, ANet has no idea how to make this profession work, so they are just dismantling it down to one or two builds they can balance for PvP and letting the rest of it rot on the vine. Think that’s improbable? The same developer did the same thing to Paragon in GW1, for apparently similar reasons.

One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. At some point it should become obvious that a mix of developers who can’t do MMO class balance shouldn’t be tasked with doing MMO class balance. I don’t care if someone has been painting every day for the last eight years of their life. If they have no talent for painting, they are never going to be a successful painter.

PinCushion.7390:

ANet doesn’t hate Elementalists. They buffed our scepter burst build dramatically with the last patch.

They don’t hate Staff Elementalists either. They buffed our ability to apply debuffs and our ability to provide support.

ANet hates kiting. Their entire game is built around kiting being really really hard. Haven’t you noticed that there’s a zillion ways to close range, and only a few lackluster ways to build range? Haven’t you noticed that most control effects are pretty easy to ignore or don’t last long? Yeah. ANet wants melee to happen, so if you don’t thrive in melee you’re gonna have a bad time.

Staff is a low-damage, high utility weapon that needs range to do well. It also has no way of keeping range other than a few of easy-to-dodge control effects. If you’re using Staff and your target isn’t busy fighting someone else you’re probably going to lose.

Notice that most of the recent staff buffs didn’t touch our damage much. They increased how easy it is for us to apply control effects and support. That’s a hint.

So, the short guide to playing a Staff Ele is still the same.

1) Find Other People Fighting Each Other
2) Apply Pressure AoE and Support
3) Run Away

If that playstyle isn’t your cup of tea then you need to find a different weapon. Scepter/Dagger is amazing right now, and Scepter/Focus is getting there.

Edit: And as to the question of whether the Support/Control specialist is a viable role, that’s not about Ele. That’s about core game design, and effects all classes. My opinion is that Control/Support is largely irrelevant when compared to how much damage or inherent survival you could have brought if you hadn’t bothered with that other stuff. When Control effects work (i.e. your opponents run out of cleanses) they’re awesome. But the rest of the time they seem like a waste of points. I don’t tPvP, so maybe it’s different there.

Well, part of the problem is that all the Elementalist’s handicaps only have any justification if the profession can kite and range makes any real difference beyond the opening 2 seconds of an encounter. Lowest base damage, lowest HP, lowest Armor, mandatory 50 SP locked into two trait lines just to be playable. Even the many hoops we have to jump through to be mediocre. might maybe, possibly make sense if this was a game were the “mage” class/profession could actually kite opponents.

I’m glad we can’t just safely kite people until they are dead. That’s about as fair/fun as a profession with perma-stealth or wack-a-mole clones or 3 second burst kills. However, handicapping the profession as if kiting was viable or ranged attacks offered a real advantage that could swing a battle in our favor is just absurd.

The frame work of the profession could be great, fun and balanced. It wasn’t quite there at launch, but instead of making the logical improvements and tuning to the profession, all they’ve done since launch has been to make the profession stray further and further from it’s potential.

I think it’s becoming more and more clear ANet has no idea what they are doing with this profession. Before anyone steps in and says “well, you should check out ‘X’ profession”, let me say that I don’t think ANet has much idea what they are doing with most of the professions in the game. It’s not “who has it worst”, it should be “why are all these professions much worse than they should be”.

Jabberwock.9014:

Hell, they could give us necro hp and our glass canon builds still wouldn’t be op, since we are so easy to catch and focus down compared to thieves and mesmers that constantly cause foes to lose target. Even bunker builds wouldn’t be really op since max hp is almost an afterthought when massive healing comes into the mix… effective hp would remain almost the same but just with a one-off hp advantage at the start of fights which would help against burst.

Exactly. Bunker builds weren’t nerfed because they were OP, because the weren’t. They were nerfed because they were viable and Elementalist is not supposed to be viable. Having a couple viable builds just brings attention to the lack of viability for the profession. They don’t know how to fix the profession, so much easier to nerf it to oblivion.

I will be shocked if S/D burst builds aren’t nerfed with in the next 60 days.

Fishbait.6723:

I noticed & had heard in spvp about the vapour form now being delayed.
At least it`s not as bad kitten it used to be on spell 3 cast, but it`s just another case of “Ele` can escape in one extremely small portion of WvWs & nowhere else, let`s fix that asap”

All those crying that we could get through a door have won, just as they did with RTL, our heals, our defenses etc…

But hey, they can`t nerf us much more, can they?……

<tumbleweed>

The odd thing I had never seen anyone complain about vapor form until a few days before the patch hit. I’m convinced that some out of left field complaint posts that slightly predate specific nerfs are someone in development trying to create cover for a nerf that no one wants or has asked for.

Yeah. We’ll need to actually test attacks per minute for each skill to determine that part of the equation. I do have one of each profession between two accounts, so I’ll try to do that when I have a chance.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Caffynated.5713:

DiogoSilva.7089:

People still think that the elementalist was nerfed last patch? If you consider that a nerf, then nothing is ever going to make you happy.

Bountiful power and Lightning flash both took big hits. Considering that the majority of eles used those skills, yes eles got nerfed. A mediocre trait 30 points up a terrible tree isn’t going to make me invest in fire. So far I’m not impressed with fresh air. The 10% damage I got from vital striking gave me a comparable damage increase and I still had healing ripple. I won 10/10 duels using 0 20 0 20 30 valk against a friend runing 0 30 0 10 30 zerker. We’re about even when both using the same build. He didn’t have the burst to kill me quickly and couldn’t keep up in a sustain fight.

Ele is weaker now than it was a week ago.

Lightning Flash is not weaker than what it was before. Have you even tested it? The instant cast + teleport still allow you to prevent bursts, which means the removal of a stun breaker hasn’t changed it much, and the lower cooldown and the higher damage makes it even better for offensive use.

Fresh Air adds up to 3-4k to your burst, and it IS usually used with vital striking (and bolt to the heart and air training). Besides, this build (with or without fresh air) allows you to keep dealing damage even if you use lightning flash but remain disabled.

Signet of Air opens up new possibilities, Arcane Shield is an excellent alternative to mist form for burst builds, especially because it is affected by the traits that would affect arcane wave and arcane blast, goep has gotten a flat buff in casting time (even though being a stun breaker is weird), focus has gotten a clear buff (even if it’s not enough yet), staff has gotten an even clearer buff, and so did several traits. Cleasing fire has gotten a trade-off, losing the stun breaker but becoming a stronger condition removal skill.

The only real nerf done to the elementalists, was to defensive bunker eles, who could deal a lot of damage with bountiful power and had way too many stun breaks. Bunker eles should still be viable after this patch, valkyrie s/d burst eles should still be viable (if not made stronger) after this patch, fresh air builds are starting to pop up, staff builds are far more effective now, triple arcane utility is now a viable setup, and even though the following builds might still not be strong enough, condition builds, signet builds and glyph builds were all buffed.

Saying that the profession has been weakened after this patch is just being dramatic. In all profession forums, there’s always a portion of the community that feels that their own profession is terrible and all other 7 professions are at a much better state.

We have several issues, but this patch was a step forward in fixing those issues, not a step backwards.

I stopped reading after the first paragraph. Have you played WvW or PvP with the nerfed Lightning Flash? I didn’t think the removal of the stun break would make too much difference, but I was so completely wrong.

There also seems to be an undocumented change to mist form. There seems to be a pause between activation and the invulnerability kicking in. Skilled opponents are hitting me with stuns or immobilize the moment I enter Mist and I’m not going any where.

ANet also added a 1 second delay between being downed and the downed skills becoming available, which has made escape via vapor form a lot more difficult.

I never felt powerful in WvW as a staff ele. I enjoyed the small amount of utility I can bring to a group or zerg, we can be a minor force multiplier and we come in handy hitting things up on walls. Roaming, I didn’t win too many 1v1 engagements, but at least I could enter a fight to guage an opponent and if things went sour and I played skillfully I had a chance to disengage.

I wasn’t powerful before the patch, but I could still have fun. ANet seems to have targeted this patch at excising that ability from the profession in a very precise fashion.

IMO, the studio has gone from an A pre-launch to a D+ post launch. Adding inability to properly tune and balance professions to the growing list of areas for concern just verifies the downward trajectory. It’s hard to comprehend how the studio that made this awesome game could be the same studio running it.

Durzlla.6295:

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

spatial surge (assuming target is at 1200 range) – 348 (2 additional targets in beam)
long ranged shot (assuming target is at 1200 range) – 317 (projectile combo 20%)
fireball – 314
hip shot (with rifled barrels for 1200 range) – 251 (pierces targets, projectile combo 20%)
necrotic grasp – 246 (piercing , projectile combo 20%)
orb of wrath – 224
dual shot (with stronger bowstrings for 1200 range) – 212 (projectile combo 100%)
chain lightning – 203 (3 bounce)
stoning – 185 (weakness, projectile combo 100%)
bleeding shot – 155 (255 bleed, projectile combo 20%)
tranquilliser dart (with rifled barrels for 1200 range) – 130 (170 bleed, weakness, projectile combo 20%)
winds of chaos – 111 (chance of 298 bleed / 328 burn / vuln, 1 bounce, chance of might / fury to ally)
water blast – 111 (370 healing)

Spatial surge hits 3 times with 1,5 second cast time 348 dmg:
(348/1,5)x3=696 dps
Long Ranged Shot (1500 range when traited) 3/4th second cast time.
317/0,75= 423 dps
fireball (Attack speed is 1 attack per 1.4 seconds.)
314/1,4= 224 dps
hip shot 3/4th second cast time:
251/0,75= 335 dps
necrotic grasp 3/4th second cast time:
246/0,75= 328 dps
orb of wrath Actual attack speed is once every .8 seconds.
224/0,8=280 dps
dual shot 2x 212 at approximately 1.19 seconds per attack.
414/1.19=348 dps
Chain Lightning 3/4th cast time:
203/0,75=271 dps (more than fireball even if there’s only one target)
stoning Attack speed is 1 attack per 1.35 seconds.
185/1,35= 137 dps
bleeding shot – Attack speed is approximately 0.96 seconds per attack damage is 155+255=410
410/0,96=427 dps
tranquilizer dart 300 damage every 3/4th second:
300/0,75= 400 dps
winds of chaos ( a bit trickier to calculate) 0,75 casting time:
111+((1/3×298)(1/3×328)(vulnerability,might,fury))/0,75=427 dps +boons and vulnerability.
water blast Attack speed is 1 attack per 1.35 seconds.
111/1,35=82 dps….. there’s a heal though….

So now in order:
Spatial surge (696 dps) mesmer
Winds of Chaos (427 dps+perks) mesmer
Bleeding Shot (427 dps) warrior
Long ranged shot (423 dps) ranger
Tranquilizer dart (400dps) engineer
Dual shot (348 dps) warrior
Hip shot (335 dps) engineer
Necrotic grasp (328 dps) necromancer
Orb of Wrath (280 dps) Guardian

Chain lightning (271 dps) elementalist
Fireball (224 dps) elementalist
Stoning (137 dps) elementalist
Water blast (82 dps) elementalist.

Now you know how they compare.
We have the lowest ranged damage, lowest healthpool, lowest base armor no access to fear, aegis, retaliation, torment, any survivability mechanic, bunker spec and mobility nerfed to bits I thought it was just some whining but seeing these numbers I can’t help but just be very very very very very sad.

*
May I also note that this is after the staff got buffed!

Your math is a little off, for starters multi hit attacks ALWAYS show the total damage, not the damage per hit. In addition for calculation damage with skills such as Winds of Chaos you need to understand that burn and bleed only tick every second, and thus won’t tick until 1s after being applied so you may as well throw then out of that initial equation and just add them onto the DPS number afterwards.

But yeah, no ele (or other caster) is known for their auto attack, ESPECIALLY not ele, who has 25 skills they can be using to fill the gap.

That last part might be relevant if the profession was designed properly, but it is not. Attunements aren’t a toolset that allows you to change tactics/focus based on the situation as it evolves. They are just hoops you need to jump through to string together complex skill rotations that, for all the effort, only provide mediocre results.

If each attunement was capable of being viable at a given role with out attunement swapping. then maybe the decision to limit the overall power of the profession would make sense. That’s just not the case.

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

spatial surge (assuming target is at 1200 range) – 348 (2 additional targets in beam)
long ranged shot (assuming target is at 1200 range) – 317 (projectile combo 20%)
fireball – 314
hip shot (with rifled barrels for 1200 range) – 251 (pierces targets, projectile combo 20%)
necrotic grasp – 246 (piercing , projectile combo 20%)
orb of wrath – 224
dual shot (with stronger bowstrings for 1200 range) – 212 (projectile combo 100%)
chain lightning – 203 (3 bounce)
stoning – 185 (weakness, projectile combo 100%)
bleeding shot – 155 (255 bleed, projectile combo 20%)
tranquilliser dart (with rifled barrels for 1200 range) – 130 (170 bleed, weakness, projectile combo 20%)
winds of chaos – 111 (chance of 298 bleed / 328 burn / vuln, 1 bounce, chance of might / fury to ally)
water blast – 111 (370 healing)

Spatial surge hits 3 times with 1,5 second cast time 348 dmg:
(348/1,5)x3=696 dps
Long Ranged Shot (1500 range when traited) 3/4th second cast time.
317/0,75= 423 dps
fireball (Attack speed is 1 attack per 1.4 seconds.)
314/1,4= 224 dps
hip shot 3/4th second cast time:
251/0,75= 335 dps
necrotic grasp 3/4th second cast time:
246/0,75= 328 dps
orb of wrath Actual attack speed is once every .8 seconds.
224/0,8=280 dps
dual shot 2x 212 at approximately 1.19 seconds per attack.
414/1.19=348 dps
Chain Lightning 3/4th cast time:
203/0,75=271 dps (more than fireball even if there’s only one target)
stoning Attack speed is 1 attack per 1.35 seconds.
185/1,35= 137 dps
bleeding shot – Attack speed is approximately 0.96 seconds per attack damage is 155+255=410
410/0,96=427 dps
tranquilizer dart 300 damage every 3/4th second:
300/0,75= 400 dps
winds of chaos ( a bit trickier to calculate) 0,75 casting time:
111+((1/3×298)(1/3×328)(vulnerability,might,fury))/0,75=427 dps +boons and vulnerability.
water blast Attack speed is 1 attack per 1.35 seconds.
111/1,35=82 dps….. there’s a heal though….

So now in order:
Spatial surge (696 dps) mesmer
Winds of Chaos (427 dps+perks) mesmer
Bleeding Shot (427 dps) warrior
Long ranged shot (423 dps) ranger
Tranquilizer dart (400dps) engineer
Dual shot (348 dps) warrior
Hip shot (335 dps) engineer
Necrotic grasp (328 dps) necromancer
Orb of Wrath (280 dps) Guardian

Chain lightning (271 dps) elementalist
Fireball (224 dps) elementalist
Stoning (137 dps) elementalist
Water blast (82 dps) elementalist.

Now you know how they compare.
We have the lowest ranged damage, lowest healthpool, lowest base armor no access to fear, aegis, retaliation, torment, any survivability mechanic, bunker spec and mobility nerfed to bits I thought it was just some whining but seeing these numbers I can’t help but just be very very very very very sad.

*
May I also note that this is after the staff got buffed!

Thanks for doing that. I’ll check the math at some point, because the gap seems wider than based on calculations I did in my head, but it does show pretty nicely how Staff Ele stacks up. Sadly, it isn’t really much better on the other skill slots either.

We really got the short end of the stick and have to work really hard to reach mediocrity, while most other professions can be exceptional with relatively little effort.

The base numbers are off, by a lot, vs. other professions and weapon sets. The nature of our traits severely limits the ability to pump up offensively and even if we do, with such low base numbers, a glass cannon ele is probably lucky to match DPS from other professions running balanced or even defensive builds.

Further proof of how messed up our damage numbers are can be found in underwater combat. I’ve actually had encounters underwater against regenerating mobs where I could not out-damge their base regen rate!

I can’t really explain it. Certain devs do have a reputation of just breaking things they don’t want to deal with, rather than actually balancing them. It’s starting to feel like they are doing that with this profession. We didn’t even have access to an underwater PvE Elite skill until very recently and analysis of the pitiful underwater DPS has been completely ignored.

Back to the numbers, remember that only stoning can act as a finisher, while most other #1 skills in the game are finishers. There is hidden DPS there that isn’t accounted for in the base damage numbers.

I’ll be trying S/D as a last resort, so I won’t comment. (So much for build diversity, huh? Are we down to one viable build now? How long do you think that will last before it’s nerfed)?

Staff buffs in no way compensate for the utility nerfs. One step forward, five steps back.

Eles were sub-par before the string of nerfs. Sub-par would now be a very generous evaluation.

I think this patch proves that the current people working on this profession, (and apparently we aren’t the only profession in the same boat), just are not talented enough to properly balance the profession and the game.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Thrashbarg.9820:

Every class can play every role in this game. Developers saying the elementalist should be a Jack of all trades show either a lack of understanding of their own game or a lack of a clear vision for the profession.

Every profession can fill every role, but the other professions have to specialize when they build. Eles are different. Every single Ele build has support, control, and deeps, and we’re pretty good at all of them at any given time.

That’s just not true. I’ve been able to run builds for most professions that allow a focused role with out sacrificing viable survivability and damage output.

Attunements should provide viable role switching mid combat, the game balances the profession as if it does. Unfortunately that not how Ele actually works. Attunements are just hoops to jump through while putting together convoluted skill rotations that may allow you to barely keep your head above water.

The nerfs not only weakened an already weak profession, but some of them actually amplify some of the flaws of the profession that the nerfed skills provided some compensation for.

On paper, I thought the changes looked ok. In practice, they are sucking the life out of a poorly implemented profession.