Guild Wars 2

Wait a week or two for the good ones to climb up. Only then will I play to have a chance to kind of farm those stuck on the low MMR or those level ones and twos for consecutive wins.

milo.6942:

Evocatus Rex.6857:

Marcos.3690:

50% reduction would be fine

150% reduction would be a start

is that damage then?

I can’t do math. Not passively, no.

It’s a way of showing respect. Like uh, a title or something.

I use Scholar runes for my DPS staff ele. I think it’s a better overall damage boost than divinity.

ThiBash.5634:

Gallrvaghn.4921:

However, if you read my post again, I was referring to power/crit based nuker staff ele which doesn’t perform well in conquest mode due to the requirement of standing inside a small circle and fighting head on which clearly isn’t how a zerker staff ele should be played to its full potential.

My apologies, I misunderstood.

No worries.

I just would like zerker staff eles to experience a little limelight in tPVP because as it stands now, it’s just pure bunker/support builds or reroll a heavy class.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

berserker stance only gives 8 seconds of condition immunity or 10 seconds if sure footed trait is taken.

the recharge time is 60 seconds so it would be another 50 seconds or 52 seconds before it can be used again.

that seems pretty balanced to me.
since the recharge time is quite long, at 60 seconds.

are people saying that the warrior can destroy them within 8 seconds?

Yes.

OR the warrior can just flail and run away with all leap skills and come back when 60 second CD is almost up.

ThiBash.5634:

Gallrvaghn.4921:

TLDR: staff ele still sucks in general.

Funny how you can make such a general statement in a thread that shows a player doing well with a staff in 1v1. It’s the staff weakest area, and you still have WvW and dungeons where it performs much better than in duels…I’m guessing you just don’t like it?

I saw the vid and it was quite good bunkering and all. In WvW, I do agree that staff eles are a staple in an organized zerg primarily for their static field and as a water field bot. And to an extent, in general PVE/dungeons. However, if you read my post again, I was referring to power/crit based nuker staff ele which doesn’t perform well in conquest mode due to the requirement of standing inside a small circle and fighting head on which clearly isn’t how a zerker staff ele should be played to its full potential. Don’t get me wrong, I’m playing full zerker staff ele in SoloQ and it’s quite fun seeing bodies drop when I cast Meteor Shower from a safe range. It’s the kiting around a small circle that I just don’t like. But it’s just a matter of preference I suppose.

SoloQ is RNG.

Before entering a match, I always pray for more warriors on my team and more thieves on enemy team.

Thobek.1730:

Maybe the next LS arc will be something more epic and they can release some advertising around that.

That was what I was hoping for after the Aetherblade LS. Sad to say Scarlet is still here to stay. I hope she’s the one dying right now and not the game itself.

1. Fixed timers and spawn locations.
2. Event contribution based primarily on DPS.
3. Condition mechanic.
4. RNG
5. Broken scaling that allows faceroll zerging to trivialize content. This together with number one results in the current champ farm trains that renders dynamic events throughout the entire map useless and not worth doing.

Phantom Master.9582:

Was I asking for a nerf? I was asking for a timing requirement and to make it possible for interrupts like most other healing skills. Even though I believe warriors current damage/survive ratio is currently the highest in the game, I’d at least want it to require some for of skill.

I’m also wondering why the devs still allow you to reply to anything on these forums, you make a lot of noise by yourself.

Chaining CC and running away when HP below tolerable threshold when You-No-Kill-Me-for-Eight-Seconds stances are on CD and then finding a nice spot to let Healing Signet bring you back to 100% in no time requires some serious skills you know.

Oraith.1732:

We need 18 vs 18 for skill based combat, and enlarge skyhammer.

We need a map-wide skyhammer damage.. With friendly fire.

Zerker staff can deal serious damage in an on-point clash if people from both teams are busy fighting each other while he safely nukes at range. But a true zerker staff ele won’t be considered good/worth it if he can’t escape/survive a bad situation which is being spotted and targetted usually by thieves/mes. But with all the aoe CCs and an improved Burning Retreat and Unsteady Ground, it’s not impossible. Add to that the upcoming Tempest Defense buff.

Unfortunately, most people consider builds that can’t cap or prevent a cap, as useless builds. And all existing effective/viable builds for all the other classes are potent in 1v1s and can sustain by themselves pretty well. And those are the things that a zerker staff ele should not do – to stand in the middle of the fight on a point and facing 1v1s.

TLDR: staff ele still sucks in general.

magical giant.8650:

aha, thanks for the answer Ozi! Shame though, imagine the burst coming from piercing shards/air training/ internal fire ^^

Which is why they intended to bug/disable the trait to work with those attunement specific damage modifier traits.

But come to think of it, it’s a different kind of playstyle/build opportunity for the ele. It would sound OP however this build is basically giving up most if not all his attunement CDS if he wants to have maximum % damage modifier bonus by facerolling attunement swap. And it’s not like he can have all those juicy damage modifiers in all traitlines since he basically has to invest 15 points already in the arcana line. But that’s just me. XD

I’m looking forward to the beefed up 5-point minors in every trait line to finally work with lingering elements. It one of those ele traits that doesn’t give any kind of impact at all. It’s as if they never existed in the first place anway. Compared to Vigor on crit minor traits of other classes. :P

Dirame.8521:

I already gave my opinion on diamond skin in the Patch preview thread. It’s a passive I win trait that should be changed to something that focuses on pushing players to be better.

My idea was this; Successful Blast finishers whilst in Earth attunement grant you and nearby allies Diamond skin for 3 seconds. And I also suggested something similar for the auto-cleansing fire trait that was previewed as well because I feel we could do with less of these things rather than more.

I love this idea.

Vanillea.5764:

No, Renewing Stamina is still an adept tier. Arcane Retribution, Arcane Resurrection and Elemental Attunement are moving to adept

And they better improve those two Arcane Traits since I’ve never heard or known anyone using those two. Like ever. EVER.

terminatorkobold.6031:

Swagg.9236:

I had wished that you were talking about actual pvp and not wvw. WvW is nonsense because of inflated stats and zerging. There’s nothing that proper skill balance can really do for it.

Sadly actual PvP absolutely does not fit staff. It is a 5v5 fight over 3 spots, leading to many 1v1 or 2v2 duels. Imho staff is really lackluster for theese small fights as it is really geared towards team fights. I feel staff becones ok at 3v3 and gets better from there on.

Assisting those 1v1 and 2v2 duels at max safe range as a zerker staff ele is not that lackluster. The critical word here is assist. You just have to avoid the spotlight every time encounters happen and you’re free to nuke like a classic mage. That, I think for me is how staff as well as any other ranged weapons was designed to be played.

Although I’m not saying the weapon set needs no changes at all. Air 3 I occasionally use, Air 2 I do not use at all since by the time I needed to blind the enemy, I’m already dead. These are two totally unreliable and lackluster spells in the staff kitten nal that need improvement.

I’m planning to finally level my fotm from 4 to 10 or higher this weekend. This patch makes me excited.

rsq.3581:

I voted yes, it should be removed from tournament rotation. That being said, I think it could be a really solid, tournament-viable map if they made some key changes. It’s actually a relatively fun map when you remove scorpion wire, magnet pull, cheese builds etc.

Yep. Like making the nodes a bit bigger. And a reduction (or complete removal) of breaking glass panels near cap points. And making Skyhammer dodgeable.

Easiest to Hardest

Thief – i love it when thieves come at me
Mesmer – they’re squishy
Ranger – just let him faceroll all his evades then start nuking
Ele – if GC, not really. if valk/clerics, a bit tricky
Engie – the grenade spam build are easy but there are some builds that are tough
Guardian – block block block
Necro – that 2 life bars is ugh
Warrior – healing signet and crazy escapes

Morderger.6298:

I really was only complaining about auto attacks miss rate. Just seems that 1 outta 2-3 cast will hit a moving target, while other classes seem to be able to pluck you away with autos while you try to kite around. So instead of people just running side to side or straight at you, they may try to kite back instead of the elementalist being the one running away.

Yeah, I also noticed not only do auto-attacks in staff miss, it sometimes also show LoS issues even though there clearly ain’t nothing between me or the target. I’m not sure if this is a bug or I don;t know.

Oblivion.8307:

zerker staff ele is god.

I concur.

Daishi.6027:

Valentin.2073:

i once had a match with 4 ele’s on my team. it wasn’t that bad. we almost won. i think we could have won the match if there were only 3 eles and there was another tanky profession on the team. i played as a spirit ranger on that match, btw.

Sounds like solo spirit ranger with 4 extra playable spirits.

Spirits don’t give out free 5 points to enemies when they’re killed

To add insult to injury, ele players always get the “You’re a noob,” and “Automatic loss for our team” comments from teammates.

Having a good player using an ele can be an asset to the team. But then again, is having a good player using any other profession aside from ele the same thing?

ahuba.6430:

some stuff

I never said anything about illusions doing radonkulous damage whether from shatter or the phantasms themselves nor about them being countered by dodge blinds and whatnots. However I am complaining about how AI system works and how AI clutter makes a mess out of a PVP scenario where a 5v5 matchup becomes 5v30 or 5v20 because of the ridiculous number of AI certain classes can produce, a.k.a. Pet Wars 2.

People are actually still trying to use this skill? Wow. o_o

ahuba.6430:

phantasms die in like 2 hits lol
this would just make teamfights alot more random than they already are with all the rallys popping around without people knowing exactly why. Phantasms dont last more than 2 seconds in team fights, it would completely break the game.

Phantasms and clones are so easily spat out by mesmers, there’s not much of a risk or loss in trying to spam illusion generating skills whenever they’re up. They’re part of the AI clutter that infests PVP and now even the minimap but that’s a whole different topic.

Summons in this game are too much AI dependent and players abuse this system. I’m not saying they’re OP but the advantages of having so many AI running around knowing that their owners do not do much of the work other than kite them here and there because they can just auto-follow and auto attack a target to death plus the clutter and chaos and mess they cause when these AI pile up are just ridiculous.

nicknamenick.2437:

You said it yourself. Shadowsteps are teleports, not movement increasing skills.

They practically teleport your character from one location to another. Strictly speaking you’re not moving. A leap or Whirlwind on the other hand very clearly move you, so they are affected by immobilize.

The animations make this quite clear, actually.

QFT.

Heavy armors look kitten. GS legendaries look kitten. Expensive dyes are kitten. And since everyone wants to look kitten, you’ll see a lot of people looking all the same.. and that’s kitten.

Gesamtkunstwerk.6590:

Why would you reduce the maximum amount of stacks rather than the maximum amount of duration? For example, elementalists can use elemental surge and arcane power for a maximum of 5 stacks, at 1 second per stack. A 5 second immobilize for investing in a grandmaster and a utility skill is not imbalanced at all. I think this change is completely unjustified.

I get your point but using Ele AND Elemental Surge AND Arcane Power as an example is just rofl. You’ll have a higher chance of seeing a dancing Kodan in Temple of the Silent Storm than seeing this ele build in any game be it hot join or tpvp. Destroying a non-existent build? Devs could care less. And it’s just sad.

infantrydiv.1620:

I disagree. What’s wrong with this change? Please explain your reasoning.

It’s great for solo queue because it is essentially the same as teammates telling you what enemy is where, which is something they could only do in voice comms, but not while in solo queue.

Two words. Mesmers. Clutter.

The idea behind the change was great. However it still needs a lot of improvement because right now, when there’s more than one mesmer on a 1vX or 2vX or XvX scenario, the icons overlap each other, all I see are butterfly masks making it rather difficult to actually figure out how many, who and what classes are fighting on a point.

Too much clutter in game, and now they invade the mini-map?

Although I do appreciate the devs effort for some QoL, this new feature is a bit irritating and frustrating especially with mesmers if it really is intended. The icons are too big they cover a whole cap point for crying out loud. It also defeats the purpose of team coordination and communication and promotes UI dependence as what faeral guy said.

Please give us an option to go back to the original mini-map where I can’t see enemy players.

This feature totally sucks.

LOL.

I haven’t seen an “Ele is OP” thread for quite some time now. Thank you very much for this.

Thank you for not making this RNG! Will definitely buy the staff this weekend.

Thank you!

Tracker.6483:

I’d like to see the glass removed by the side points.

It’s just too easy for thieves and engineers to pull the bunker off point and down the hole; usually while they are invisible.

Yeah, there’s too much cheese on that.

Dahkeus.8243:

Not sure why people are choosing 5 v 5. In hot joins, you’re more likely to have inequalities in team size, which makes less of an impact in matches where you have more members.

You’re right. However, IMO, the game should prioritize filling in the on-going 5v5 rooms first before going to the on-going 8v8 rooms, and the rooms that are currently waiting for players if everyone is hitting the Play Now button instead of choosing the room to get in. In that way, inequalities in team size should easily be filled when players start to leave. Add to that the fact that we now have spectator mode that allows players to hop in on an already full room when a slot opens up.

But, for me, 8v8 should not be removed completely. More options = more fun to more players.

manveruppd.7601:

The issue with 5v5 hotjoin is that it breaks down incredibly easily when players start to leave. Numerical imbalances are far more punishing for the outnumbered team, and it’s a lot easier for a game to break down completely because too many people ahve left and the remaining don’t feel like just running around capping empty points without ever meeting an enemy. I agree that 8v8 is a chaotic, pointless flustercluck, but if 3 players get bored and simultaneously leave the match is still playable and fun.

I do believe that 5v5 is “better”, and there should be more 5v5 servers. Maybe a 3:1 ratio in favour of 5v5.

I also agree that matchmaking should prioritise 5v5. In fact, I suggest you try out the following parameters for placing players who click “play now”
1. matches with <9 current players (this will prioritise non-full 5v5 servers before starting to fill 8v8 ones)
2. ongoing matches (this will help correct population imbalances faster)
3. matches with an odd number of players (cause autobalance can’t fix those)
If the placement algorithm prioritise servers that fulfil these 3 criteria games will be much more fun.

However, you should look into how many players actually USE the “play now” button. My suspicion is that players just pick a server from the list instead! I’m sure you can track this. If I’m right, then you can “encourage” players to pick more non-full 5v5 servers to join by doing a mild redesign of the pvp window:

a. hotjoin tab should be the topmost tab in the window! I can’t begin to describe how many rank 1 players I see in team arena games! If you place the hotjoin tab 3rd a lot of new players won’t even see it! If you’re dead-set on keeping the personal stats window first, at least put a big shiny “play now” button in there as well!

b change default server listing in the hotjoin tab to hide full servers (and by “full” I mean full team spots, not servers that can still fit more observers!) You could have a checkbox to enable showing full servers, or even make a dropdown menu with “show games with available team spots”, “show games with available observer spots”, and “show all games (inc full)”, but BY DEFAULT the server should hide games with no team spots.

c. change the default listing on on the hotjoin tab to list games that have already started but which are not full first: currently, servers are listed by population descending, meaning full games are shown first! On a busy day you have to scroll down a couple pages to even FIND any 5v5 games with room to join, because the topmost games are all full 8v8 servers, or 10v10 custom arenas, followed by full 5v5 games with a shedload of observers, followed by non-full 8v8 games! Players will still have the ability to sort games by population/name/map/whatever, but make the default listing something more sensible than population descending!

d. have separate tabs/filters for 5v5, 8v8, custom arenas, and “all”, with 5v5 being the default one. Currently, “all” is the default one, and because of the previous point (default listing is by population descending), new players think 8v8 is the “standard” game mode, cause that’s all they see.

e. make the serverlist refresh automatically more frequently, to stop people joining a match they think has room that turns out to be full by the time they load.

f. Just make the “play now” button more prominent!

Well said.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Justin ODell.9517:

Actually, half our hot joins are setup to be 5v5, but due to a bug discovered today the 8v8 matches are being preferred incorrectly.

We’re talking about this internally, and we may be able to get this changed as soon as the 26th.

Fix it the right way Justin.

Delete 8v8. Problem solved. Since you have to delete Hot join when the new modes are released anyway it can’t hurt to get an early start.

Why would they delete hotjoins? So that people will go for SoloQ/Team arenas? I’d rather have more options rather than none at all. However, what they need to do is make tPVP arenas less broken, more attractive and much more approachable than hotjoins if they want people to start queueing for them. Reduction or removal of rank/glory gain on hotjoins is a good start, IMO.

Dweia Tulenhenki.8127:

As an “older” player (age > 40), I’m not such a fast clicker than 25 years ago when starting playing console/pc games => not going to learn to play those “faster clicking combinations” like d+d (and guardian with hammer + auto attack is boring). So I don’t mind if my staff is slow, but it has some issues when not fast clicker to get full benefit from auras, boons, cantrips etc..

1) inflicting condition dmg, not enough power at the moment, so using earth traits give mainly more toughness => rather use water to heal

2) control effects, in wvwvw quite limited against bigger zerk
- change “Blast Staff”=> “Blast Weapon”, increase all weapon radius 10%, increase all weapon range 10%
- Unsteady Ground, Meteor Shower quite weak compared to off-hand dagger
- for example Meteor Shower, could cause “Daze” or “Confusion”

3) chill should affect to all classes, ie slowing down everything : all cooldowns, weapon swap weapons, swap pet, ……

4) why ele weapon skills or traits doesn’t remove boons from foes compared to necro’s grim specter/well of power or mesmer null field/phantamsal disenchanter?
maybe mist form, remove 1 boon from all foes, radius 240 => so that even when running away, can help my team in wvwvw

I can quite agree with numbers 1, 3 and 4.

As for number 2, when against a zerg, there’s nothing better than the staff for utility and team support. Water Fields plus Static Field and Unsteady Ground can wreak havoc. Staff is the master weaponset for large scale battles. The other weapon sets can do quite fine but excel much more in small team fights and roaming and even 1v1 or 1vx compared to staff. Each weaponset has its own pros and cons and it’s not such a bad thing.

Dirame.8521:

A burst Necro was one of my first builds in GW2 and Putrid Explosion’s instant cast was one of the reasons why I picked it. You telling me it has a cast time like I can’t read is just silly tbh.

Yeah, tested it on my necro again. The explosion is instant. Summon has cast time. I somehow kept thinking the other way around. My bad :P

Regardless of my blunder, I still wouldn’t call it OP.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

Let me get this straight?
You’re trying to say that entering soloq/tpvp and waiting between 5-40minute’s, regularly getting 4 vs 5 or 5 vs 0, sometimes going against all under rank 10 to then going against all over rank 50, where your winning team can’t continue, where you get little rewards that benefit any other part of the game is less messy than instantly entering 8 vs 8 where you still earn glory/rank and can quickly achieve a daily laurel?

That’s some crazy thinking.

Hotjoins have issues too you know. Not just SoloQ/TPvP Arenas. XD

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

Gallrvaghn.4921:

I hate 8v8. I just wish there’s a Play Now option that sends you to 5v5 custom arenas only. Or am I missing something??

Add those arena’s to your favourite list. You then access them again easily.

I admit I don’t use those features much. XD

I just want to have an option wherein if I press the Play Now button, I get to join 5v5 maps only.

Dominus.2360:

5+ min. But I think better matchmaking can’t solve the 4v5-problem alone, there must be further instruments against this.

I personally think the way Dota2 handles this issue is really good. It happens so often that someone doesn’t accept a match or doesn’t finish loading the map for whatever reason (it happens every now and then that I have to press this button myself, so I don’t blame anyone for doing so), and when I think that this would always result in a 4v5-match it would be absolutly horrible.

In my oppinion, queing in GW2 should/could work like that:

1) Press Queue-button.
2) Match is ready: Accept/Don’t accept (you can’t queue again for ~1min, but nothing else happens), ~15sec time to do that. If you don’t press any button in the given time, you can’t queue for ~2min.
3a) Someone didn’t accept: Everyone except the refusing player is queued again automatically (after being informed that a player wasn’t ready)
3b) Everyone accepted: The map is loaded instantly and everyone is in spectator mode (not able to chose a side), seeing the list of players with classes. Now it’s time for strategy and rerolling classes. A Ready-button is available. There should be info like ‘Loading map’, ‘Ready’, and ‘Rerolling class’. It would be incredible awesome if one could swap the character directly from this menu without returning to the character-screen and doing a detour over the mists (or any other map where the character currently is), but this is more a detail. The whole thing can take up to ~2min, if everyone pressed the ready-button, the match is started earlier. Make sure that nothing else except waiting and rerolling the class can be done in meantime so that noone has to wait the full 2min because of the one guy that wants to finish his hotjoin-round.

This whole thing would increase the time needed until a match is ready by about ~1-2min. But it would allow you to punish players for leaving or afk’ing even harder because they explicitly stated that they’re ready for the match about 2min before it started (and not about ~3-10min like it is the case now). It has also the nice sideeffect that situations where you have 3 bunkers because all of them showed up in the last few seconds aren’t possible anymore.

Awesome ideas there especially the info status of other players like Loading Map, Ready, Offline, etc other than the current green check that’s available.

kirito.4138:

You just haven’t found that right build that fits your playstyle yet. Once you find it then it can easily last 10+ games =]

What he said.

I play 3 or 4 professions but I’m on my ele most of the time. The others are just there to faceroll-revenge when I get too frustrated getting beat on my ele.

Mash Hog.5672:

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Arcane Ressurection. Who uses this? I mean really? Putting it on a higher tier and will compete with Elemental Attunement is like saying please forget that this kind of trait exists. It needs some serious serious buffs or redesign.

Pair this with runes of mercy and a bunker/healing spec and this could be a pretty awesome team fighter!

That sounds good on paper. But I really think I’ll get more bang for the buck from Elemental Attunement than from Arcane Retribution. I know it’s personal preference. But would you really pick this over EA any day??

Edit: Arcane Ressurection not Retribution

Arcane Ressurection. Who uses this? I mean really? Putting it on a higher tier and will compete with Elemental Attunement is like saying please forget that this kind of trait exists. It needs some serious serious buffs or redesign.

Arcane Retribution CD cut in half is a really really delicious buff for my staff zerker elemental surge ele. This is awesome!

Justin ODell.9517:

Actually, half our hot joins are setup to be 5v5, but due to a bug discovered today the 8v8 matches are being preferred incorrectly.

We’re talking about this internally, and we may be able to get this changed as soon as the 26th.

This is heaven sent. Thank you!

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

fun playing in them.

having 2 buttons for “Play Now” would not hut though.

i.e.

Play Now (5 vs 5 )
Play Now (8 vs 8 )

I would loooooove to have this. And since 8v8 arenas are always on top of the list, it’s always those rooms that get filled fast and in a higher priority whereas 5v5 almost always never end up as 5v5 but rather 3v4 or less :/

Dirame.8521:

Gallrvaghn.4921:

You already said some of the drawbacks of Putrid Explosion. You can burn down the Bone Minions with aoe before they can even explode. You can dodge, block, or blind the attack. And the necro can’t really control the place where the minions are gonna explode. Note that there are two Bone Minions and they do not move in sync with each other, so it takes a bit of skill on the Necro’s part to be aware of each of the Bone Minion’s location and which one is gonna explode first. And AFAIK, it ain’t instant and has 1sec cast time.

It can’t be blocked and it is instant. I play Necro amongst other things so I know this.

I have a necro too and the main reason I don’t use Bone Minions that much is because Putrid Explosion has a cast time.