Guild Wars 2

Anierna.6918:

People did NOT say it increases “damage” by any amount. The word “damage” was never mentioned. Neither was the word “modifier” mentioned, but it was inferred. I’ll give examples of their inferences to it:
.

santa.1640:

usually there is might.
and fury if you have the trait or there is the banner.
and? i’m keep to thinking but the maximum of this trait is 2%.

So the OP believes that, because he’s assuming he’ll only have 2x boons, “the maximum of this trait is 2%.” The maximum what of this trait? The trait does NOT increase you OVERALL DMG directly; what it does is give you a dmg modifier, which in turn increases dmg. The OP was under the false assumption that these modifiers stacked additively (he assumed 2 boons = 2%). Furthermore, he assumed that just because the the tooltip says it increases “damage” by 1% per boon, that meant it directly increases overall dmg by that amount. It doesn’t.

Indeed it doesnt, due to self-multiplication he might be 0.1 percent off.

Damage is directly proportional to effective power. A damage modifier DOES increase your damage by exactly the percentage it indicates. Due to self-multiplication in this case it’s a little harder to determine what that percentage is exactly, but by just adding you’ll be off by about 0.1 percent which is no big deal.

If anything, you shouting 15 percent extra modifier is what is misinforming in this thread, as a casual player will have 0 use for these numbers.

Anierna.6918:

Rage.2017:

With elemental attunement trait and constant attunement-switching you will get a constant bonus of 5-6% and if you have a good party, you will get 6-8% out of this trait.

Rage is giving a 5-6% number for solo and a 6-8% number for groups (presumably in dungeons). Even with a “good party,” you will never be able to average more than 6 boons (I used 5 for my calcs, but realistically it’s slightly lower), unless you’re using non-meta builds specifically geared towards maximizing the number of boons, which is noob. So that 8% number he’s giving is rubbish. 6 boons self-multiplies to a 6.15% modifier, and when factoring in the other modifiers, results in a 18% modifier. The actual DMG INCREASE is 6.1%. No way you’d achieve a modifier within the range he gave. Also no way you’d achieve 8% increase in total dmg from that trait.

So he said 6-8 percent, whereas its 6.15 percent. Not a big deal. The 18 percent is again a pointless statistic, since the actual difference in modifier is entirely dependent on what build you use.

Anierna.6918:

No, you were more than 0.1% off. Those guys were saying that Bountiful Power would increase your DMG MODIFIERS by “5-6%” and “6-8%,” and that’s just not true. In the particular build I used for my example, it will actually increase your dmg modifiers by 15%! It will increase your EP by 5.1%, but that’s not what the OP was asking, and it’s not what the OP or any of the replies prior to mine were referring to.

Noone spoke of increasing damage modifiers. People said it increases damage by 5-6 percent, which is the only relevant answer. These people were 0.1 percent off.

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

Gokil.2543:

Imagine churning earth pulsed an immobilize instead of a cripple :o
Now that would be interesting. Maybe we wouldn’t need to flash for every single CE then, because people just waddle away.

I know.. I know. Op as hell but interesting nonetheless

An ele skill usable without using another skill to help it land? Inconceivable!

Well.. It would probably still need armor of earth to avoid being interrupted

Shame on us guyz, we were 0.1 percent off! :-D

Honestly, burying a person who knows so little about the game (check op) under calculations just to point out a 0.1 percent difference is not really helpful.

Imagine churning earth pulsed an immobilize instead of a cripple :o
Now that would be interesting. Maybe we wouldn’t need to flash for every single CE then, because people just waddle away.

I know.. I know. Op as hell but interesting nonetheless

Wrath.7801:

Is it possible to do a similar sort of build and go into dungeons as a healer? (I have never done a dungeon before so don’t know what to expect)

You could, but everyone would be quite mad at you for it.

There’s no need for this kind of support in dungeons, and you’ll be supporting more by killing the opponent quicker.

@spoj

That doesn’t change the issue :-/ You still remove one of three multiplicative scaling factors and replace it with a linear scaling. You can’t expect the linear scaling to make up for the loss of a multiplicative stat at the peak of its performance (being when accompanied with the other two)

I may be overcomplicating things a bit. Making power or condi dmg main stat would be nice, and I would love it. My main concern is people who think that a full set of rampager’s should be able to do as much dmg as a full set of zerks. That can’t happen unless major overhauls happen in the system itself

Silferas.3841:

Gokil.2543:

Silferas.3841:

Ok, let’s look at it from this point of view:

Zerk: Power/Prec/Critical damage – multiplicative scaling with 3 stats
Ram: Power/Prec/Condition damage – 2x multiplicative scaling with 2 stats (provided proper build)

Zerk: I hit tougher, with higher chance to crit, with more damage each crit
Ram: I hit tougher, with higher chance to crit, with conditions stacking faster when i crit, with conditions hitting harder

Now the difference is clear, but the fix would be apparent (yet demanding). Make power affect condition damage. This would either be achieved by further multiplying stacks of conditions applied according to power (let’s say 900 power = 1 extra stack static for the purpose of demonstration), or with power decreasing the period of ticks (2000 power = bleeds tick every half a second instead of every second)

Result: dire is not affected, rampager is boosted

Q.E.D.

Or turn rampager’s into a condition damage/condition duration/power set.

That would be a doable thing to balance with berserker’s without changing mechanics too drastically

EDIT: or condition damage/condition duration/precision for on crit procs.

That would solve the multiplicative issue, but not the issue of people not running rampagers. The deciding factor in PvE is the TTK, and unless that is increased on rampagers it will remain a second class citizen.

What is TTK?

spoj.9672:

You dont have to effect condition damage in anyway. You just adjust the stat numbers on rampager gear to be on par with beserker. Or Silferas’s idea works too, except that has the problem of beserker builds getting more condi dmg aswell.

Every set has the same amount of stats (barring celestial). I’m not entirely against the idea, but I don’t see it happening

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

The elementals should have active abilities that we can use while they are out, like necromancer minions.

The lesser water elemental ice field might be nice, but it doesn’t do anything if it comes out at the wrong time in the wrong location.

Had a discussion about it a while back. If they worked a bit like ranger spirits, they would become so much more useful.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Elemental-trait-idea/first#post3469187

Silferas.3841:

Ok, let’s look at it from this point of view:

Zerk: Power/Prec/Critical damage – multiplicative scaling with 3 stats
Ram: Power/Prec/Condition damage – 2x multiplicative scaling with 2 stats (provided proper build)

Zerk: I hit tougher, with higher chance to crit, with more damage each crit
Ram: I hit tougher, with higher chance to crit, with conditions stacking faster when i crit, with conditions hitting harder

Now the difference is clear, but the fix would be apparent (yet demanding). Make power affect condition damage. This would either be achieved by further multiplying stacks of conditions applied according to power (let’s say 900 power = 1 extra stack static for the purpose of demonstration), or with power decreasing the period of ticks (2000 power = bleeds tick every half a second instead of every second)

Result: dire is not affected, rampager is boosted

Q.E.D.

Or turn rampager’s into a condition damage/condition duration/power set.

That would be a doable thing to balance with berserker’s without changing mechanics too drastically

EDIT: or condition damage/condition duration/precision for on crit procs.

spoj.9672:

Gokil.2543:

Indeed it is, and that disparity will grow even larger when you sync rampager’s dps with zerker’s dps.

Good point on the bleed on crit. Although I would argue that these traits are not where the bulk of the damage is coming from. Far from it even.

Im struggling to understand your train of thought. Rampager is currently much weaker than beserker so buffing it to be on par with beserker would make rampager too strong? What?

Sorry for being unclear.

T/;DR: Buffing rampager’s to be on par with berserker, would mean buffing condition damage significantly across the board, which would make every condition set outside of rampager’s too strong.

Silferas.3841:

@Gokil: PVT is already far inferior to Dire in terms of damage output, it is only preferred because of how Zergs work in WvW, and for world bosses, where conditions do you no good because of the condi cap and massive cleanses in zergs

EDIT: and almost forgot, condition damage scales (for most builds) with precision as well, increasing your chances of stacking 1 or 2 more bleeds (depending on gear) with each hit. It’s not 3 stats scaling with each other like in berserker’s, but that’s exactly why condition damage output needs to be higher

Indeed it is, and that disparity will grow even larger when you sync rampager’s dps with zerker’s dps.

Good point on the bleed on crit. Although I would argue that these traits are not where the bulk of the damage is coming from. Far from it even.

EDIT:

It’s not 3 stats scaling with each other like in berserker’s, but that’s exactly why condition damage output needs to be higher

That’s exactly the problem. If you put condition damage on equal footing with a triple scaling like berserker’s, it’s going to be disproportionately strong in defensive setups, since unlike the trinity of effective power stats, it won’t reduce exponentially, but rather linearly.

Norjena.5172:

Why would power be an increase compared to prec? (ok critchance overcapping with stacksigil, but we can use condidmg stacks).

Where is the power>prec point? As a necromancer i can get 5sec bleedings on a 66% chance per crit. Dagger is attacking fast looks strong to me if critchance is high.

U say condidmg>power>prec ok.
65% critical chance asc rampager as a necromancer (250 prec traits). 8% warriors banner and fury>93% critical chance. Is this too much?
Stacking conditiondmg now?
Well if the prec gets reduced down to 52/3% (like zerkers) what will we stack? Precision? If yes why?

I’m not entirely sure what you’re asking, but maybe this is an answer:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1li5q3/breakeven_points_of_power_vs_precision_mathtable/

spoj.9672:

Gokil.2543:

Norjena.5172:

Fully stacked a rampager hybrid should do a bit more dmg then berserkers. Because.

1. he needs time to stack up bleedings so he has a “low dmg” phase which is reducing the whole dmg done over the fight
2. The condition cap, we can´t calculate with Burning+25Bleedings

At the end it should be nearly equal to a berserkers dps output at average killing time (20seconds for example).
A bite more if the fight is longer, a bit less if it´s shorter.

Just one problem with this logic: Power, precision and critical damage increase damage dealt multiplicatively. As in each becomes more effective as the other two increase.

If you want rampager’s to perform equal to berserker’s, assuming rampager’s becomes power main stat for ease of calculation, that would imply that dire prefix becomes completely out of proportion with soldier’s. Does that make sense?

All defensive condi prefixes would do disproportionate damage to their defensive power counterparts, since condition damage scales linearly, and you will have calibrated that scaling with the peak of a multiplicative scaling graph, being the effective power graph.

Whats your point? Defensive condi prefixes already do more damage compared to their defensive power counterparts. Which is why condi mainstat on rampager would probably be too strong but power mainstat would be balanced.

My point is that if you went through with the logic of syncing rampager’s damage with berserker’s damage, that difference on these defensive sets would become much much larger. Even with power as a mainstat on rampager’s.

Even more so if you take various damage multipliers into account, since condition damage doesnt scale with them. So if you want to make an equally strong dps setup with rampager’s and berserker’s, and want to boost conditions to where they can compete with the damage loss from losing the crit damage, you would get a serious balance issue on more defensive setups.

I just went through the first 5 pages of every profession forum.

Most of them don’t even have 1 red answer, some have 1 like us, and engi has 2.

You’re just complaining for the sake of complaining

Norjena.5172:

Fully stacked a rampager hybrid should do a bit more dmg then berserkers. Because.

1. he needs time to stack up bleedings so he has a “low dmg” phase which is reducing the whole dmg done over the fight
2. The condition cap, we can´t calculate with Burning+25Bleedings

At the end it should be nearly equal to a berserkers dps output at average killing time (20seconds for example).
A bite more if the fight is longer, a bit less if it´s shorter.

Just one problem with this logic: Power, precision and critical damage increase damage dealt multiplicatively. As in each becomes more effective as the other two increase.

If you want rampager’s to perform equal to berserker’s, assuming rampager’s becomes power main stat for ease of calculation, that would imply that dire prefix becomes completely out of proportion with soldier’s. Does that make sense?

All defensive condi prefixes would do disproportionate damage to their defensive power counterparts, since condition damage scales linearly, and you will have calibrated that scaling with the peak of a multiplicative scaling graph, being the effective power graph.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

In Guild Wars 2, the functionality of your build is determined by traits. You can select supporty traits, dps oriented traits or personal sustainability oriented traits. You traits, along with weapon choice and utility skills, determine your playstyle. This is the beginning and the end of playstyle determination.

This is only partially true. Only defensive traits that don’t scale with defensive stats can define your playstyle exclusively through traits (reflects, aegis, blinds, vigor). It is completely and utterly pointless to run a healway guardian, or a 0/10/0/30/30 elementalist without a good baseline of toughness to make the hp/sec from trait choices worthwhile. Generally, sustainable builds are equally defined by traits and gear alike. I play a lot of WvW and the concept of a glass cannon healway guardian or a full bunker axe/gs warrior is absurd.

In theory it sounds nice to substitute all that is defensive but not vitality or toughness into one big category of ‘active defenses’. Although that is not always the case.

As for rampagers, it serves a purpose on innately tanky condi specs (read: necros), who want to squeeze in some extra damage when they feel they have too much tankyness when fully geared in either rabid or carrion.

There are a lot of stat combinations that don’t make sense on their own, but serve a purpose when tailoring a build in an environment where it is actually necessary to do so (read: not in pve).

Also, what kind of change did you have in mind? Doubling the condition damage on rampagers? Surely you understand it doesn’t work that way, since the net amount of stats needs to be balanced.

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

oZii.2864:

This next patch will be the reemergence patch. I feel it in my bones. I think the last patch was lets do a little now they see it wasn’t enough. I expect a change to RTL, signet of resto and cleansing water unerfed in PvP. Armor of earth finally reduced in cd.

That is all that my gut tells me.

My fear is that we still have to wait like 3 month for any changes or un-nerfs. Grouch said they would closely look at all the pvp-only nerfs in the coming weeks. And which arenanets balance patch frequency till now we’ll probably have to wait till march or april for the next real balance patch with changes for all classes.

I agree it will be a while before the next major overhaul. It’s only been a month, the meta hasn’t even settled yet in PvP.

The chill does damage idea could be an awesome addition. I think it has the most potential out of all the ideas I’ve seen put forth so far.

Maybe we can add some kind of dynamic to burning a chilled target or vice versa. Parallel to how in real life rapidly heating something cold/frozen can damage it severely, this effect is called thermal shock.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_shock

So either a trait that makes chill do damage, or a trait that makes having both burning and chill up on a target at the same time have a devastating side effect.

I think I’m gonna start a thread either here or on the balance forum discussing this idea.

I honestly don’t like the sound of the ‘mark of rodgort’ idea. Elementalist easily has the most access to burning out of all professions, and I hate the design of impale. Wouldn’t want to copy it even if it meant we became op.

Something very important to note when considering the condi ele, is that burning has absolutely awful condition damage scaling. At the moment this is the biggest issue when trying to build a condi ele.

Burning: 0.25*condition damage +328 damage per second.

That means 1312 condition damage to double burning damage.

Bleeding: 0.05*condition damage + 42.5 damage per second

That means 850 condition damage to double bleeding ticks.

Torment and poison have about the same scaling as bleeding, confusion is in between the two. So burning has 50 percent worse scaling than all other damaging conditions.

Since condi ele is primarily based on rapid applications of burning, he benefits very little from building condition damage, compared to the classic condition professions. Give us either torment in water attunement, poison anywhere or a bleed on crit trait. We don’t need more burning, we need cover conditions and moreover, we need properly scaling conditions. I think a bleed on crit trait would be the easiest way to go about this. If you base a condition build on burning alone, you will find that either that build is not viable, or it is viable but you would be better off just speccing into power, and taking the burning as an extra since it scales so poorly.

Torment on chill sounds interesting as well. What do you think? Make it a master or grandmaster trait. (perhaps grandmaster minor in earth). That would be quite unique, and fitting of the theme of elementalist based on burning and chill:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_the_Elementalist
Or perhaps a trait like terror for necromancers, called Biting Cold for example, that makes chill do damage! Easier to balance, and it turns the elementalist into a ‘few conditions but hard hitting conditions’ as opposed to the other classes, which have more of a condispam feel to them.

reikken.4961:

Gokil.2543:

Can any other staff player back this up? Can staff really perform anywhere near decent in 1v1s in sPvP (stay on the point or kill opponent). Because from my experience in PvP and WvW roaming, a staff ele in open terrain is a non-factor, or even a negative contribution due to being a free rally.

idk, but for what it’s worth, I win most of my 1v1s in hotjoin, using full glass staff

Hotjoin… Yeah. I know staff can be useful there due to the sheer size of the battles, and the lack of skill of almost all players in there.

So do you feel you could beat anyone on any build of equal skill with a glass staff?

ThiBash.5634:

Gokil.2543:

Same with the resurrection glyph and the elite glyph. The problem is really that the non-elite elemental summon is borderline useless. It doesn’t provide significantly different elementals because they lack the defining characteristics that come with the elite elemental.

That’s actually just the tooltip. Granted, the elite versions are slightly stronger than the regular ones. But for the most part, the small ones get the exact same abilities. Lesser fire elementals still grant might and cause cripple. Lesser ice elementals still cause chill. Lesser air elementals still buff swiftness. And lesser earth elementals still cause weakness and protection. The big difference is usually just one of the 2 or 3 abilities they get.

I disagree. The lesser elementals don’t even come close in usefulness. The skills the elite elementals have are the only reason they are worth summoning. 7k splash heal? Solid duration ranged stun? Water and air elementals especially are very underwhelming as a non-elite summon. Fire elite elemental does reliable dps due to having a good ranged attack, and earth elite elemental grants protection and aoe cripple.

Btw lesser earth elemental doesnt grant protection.

On the topic of what glyphs are meant to be, I agree they are the jack-of-all-trades, use changes depends on situation kind of skill (that’s what I said in my post as well). But besides GoEH and GoEP they lack a clearly defined purpose. If they could somehow get some stronger and more obvious benefits, they would perhaps become worth using on a 1v1 build that can adapt to whatever opponent is sent to fight you.

I watched the videos before, and held my silence waiting for more staff content because I wasn’t very impressed. When you showed your 48 percent win rate and 1000 ranking(I applaud you for trying staff though), I had even more doubts. I’ve been rank 250 and on a 57 percent win rate atm with D/D. I would love to believe staff has a place in PvP but to this day I’m waiting for convincing videos against competent players. Not hating on you in the slightest, I just can’t see what all the fuss is about. When people start claiming staff is useable as a 1v1 set, I just can’t take that seriously.

Can any other staff player back this up? Can staff really perform anywhere near decent in 1v1s in sPvP (stay on the point or kill opponent). Because from my experience in PvP and WvW roaming, a staff ele in open terrain is a non-factor, or even a negative contribution due to being a free rally.

Mash Hog.5672:

I was thinking of turning Glyphs into more of an AoE Support kind of playstyle. It would still fit in with the “Jack of All Trades” type of playstyle which they are pushing but it needs to be a lot more defined.
Furthermore Glyphs definitely need a LOT more traits which effect it.

+ a billion on the needs more defining.

I think glyphs were meant as a jack of all trades choice, allowing you to use them for different results depending on the situation. I agree though that they make little sense as a category and feel terribly lackluster as a basis for a build. Maybe we can push it more towards the direction of the situational utility:

What I mean by the jack of all trades thing, take glyph of elemental power. When activated in air, you can keep weakness up on your opponent, which is obviously effective at dealing with power builds. Activated in earth, it’s a good tool for kiting melee opponents, whereas in water it’s especially effective against elementalist. Finally in fire, it can help burn down a tanky opponent.

GoEH has the same kind of mechanic. Activate in different attunements for different effects depending on the situation.

Same with the resurrection glyph and the elite glyph. The problem is really that the non-elite elemental summon is borderline useless. It doesn’t provide significantly different elementals because they lack the defining characteristics that come with the elite elemental.

So overall glyphs severely lack solid defense. Inscription is a nice trait, but we lack a spammable glyph to proc it often, or just a reliable glyph that provides us with the kind of defense cantrips do. They definitely have potential though.

Signets deserve some buffs, especially in cast times. I’d like to see them as very defined condi option, since written in stone is in the condi line.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

TyPin.9860:

Okay I zerkered a bit now with this build. It was quite fun, especially if one can Meteorshower an unexpecting group during a fight over a cap point. With my first shower I downed three people and capped the point.

However, there are two professions I can not deal with at all in a 1v1 scenario. That is guardian and those healing signet warriors. They just trample over me. Is this common, or do I just need to practice and adept my playstyle?

EDIT: For healing I actually wanne use arcane brilliance, but I don’t have enough skillpoints yet.

Both are just practice. I used to have a good bit of trouble with Warriors, but after a bit the only real thing they can do to me is run away haha. If they are smart enough to run, they can always get away, but I usually don’t have much trouble with them in 1v1s.
DPS guardians can get me if they get the jump on me, but otherwise I have zero trouble with guardians of any flavor.
Really, the best remedy for either of these is to use static, earth 4, frozen ground and burning retreat to kite (also keep swiftness up), while tapping away at their health with lava font and eruption.
If either of them switch to projectiles, use magnetic aura. If you use arcane shield or some distracting control spell before it, they will often not even notice magnetic aura for the full duration and deal massive amounts of damage to themselves.

Edit: I would drop fire III for fire V (combos nicely with fire 25pt minor) and I would grab Evasive Arcana in place of Elemental attunement. Also, I would try to fit arcane wave in place of mist form or lightning flash eventually, especially when you get brilliance. This is my current build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWnEEleYnBWGQlYAI8QACMQUwiyjY2xGA-TkAg0CnIqRVjrGTNyas1M+A

You don’t have to follow any of this stuff, by the way, but it is a good starting point.
One of the great things about the staff is that you can do whatever you want with it.

Let me get this straight, are you saying you can reliably 1v1 warriors and guardians? As in kill them or at hold a node against them?

Because that sounds like 100 percent nonsense to me. Staff in my experience cannot duel any class, no matter what build they are running. That’s just not what it was meant to do. I would start taking staff players a bit more seriously if they accepted that and told me how they can make up for that shortcoming.

I’d definitely go for ascended. The recipes for exotic celestial are absurdly expensive, might as well go ascended

Gesamtkunstwerk.6590:

On the topic of Arcane traits and utilities, I’d love to see Arcane Retribution proc’ing on stuns or auras. I’d also be content with refreshing Arcane Power at 75% health.

In my opinion, arcane skills should work similarly to mesmer mantras; e.g., you channel Arcane Power for 2 3/4 seconds for unique 5 charges, each charge yielding 100% critical chance on your next attack. Alternatively, it could be redesigned with 2 charges of 2-3 attacks, which could be more useful for stacking conditions with Elemental Surge.

Similarly, Arcane Wave, Blast, and Brilliance could receive two charges. In return, their effective damage and/or healing would be halved. This gain would enhance the utility of Elemental Surge, since it would proc its conditions more regularly.

An Arcane version of Harmonious Mantras could then be worked into the grandmaster tier, yielding 3 charges instead of 2. At the same time, Elemental Surge would be moved down to master tier (replacing Arcane Energy).

Good idea in itself, but I’d propose making arcane power have only 4 charges or have a very limited timeframe in which to use these charges. 5 on demand crits is potentially too strong if used on your big attacks only.

Otherwise cool idea

If your guild could stop zerging and camping every duelist in the obsidian sanctum arena that’d be great. That way everybody gets to have their fun.

We kind of need the standard D/D build stickied along with all these max dps speedrunning builds…

D/D is the best roaming set due to mobility and aoe cc to aid you in 1vx.

Use anything that uses at least 20 points in water, 30 in arcana and 10 in air.
Use cavalier/berserker/berserkervalk in trinkets because of excellent crit damage ratios.
Use Knight’s/soldiers/celestial armor and weapons. Mix and match until you get a good amount of precision, toughness and vitality.
Use a sigil of battle and a sigil of force (after stacking bloodlust preferrably). Boon duration runes are optimal.

I can link you a build or two, but you might have more fun trying for yourself.

Nova Stiker.8396:

I am the strongest Elementalist and I have NEVER lost a duel against another Elementlist.

k

DiogoSilva.7089:

I think arcane spells should remain as burst utility skills, even if with some tweaks to tone down the instant air burst sequence.

One of the cool thing about arcane spells, is that they offer more reliable damage to staff or to focus builds. Yes, those are not commonly used in pvp, so this is not very noticeable yet. For d/d or s/d users, arcane spells might feel “more of the same”, but please, keep in mind what will be if focus or staff become more viable someday. Because they’re highly focused on utility, putting burst skills on our utility skills is an appealing option, and should remain viable. This is already happening with some niche s/f fresh air builds in pvp.

Another interesting niche about the auto-crits, is that they allow for some unique build setups, like bursting without high precision investment. If Arcane Power was more effective at what it does, it would pretty much be the elementalist’s version of warrior’s unsuspecting foe trait.

I can understand that people want more utility in their utility slots, but arcanes fill some interesting niches as they are, and I think they should be left at that (except, again, tweaked to tone down the instant air burst sequence). It’s our other utility skills that need to be buffed. Glyphs, conjures, signets. If we want more utility, we should look at those, instead of revamping the current arcane’s niches.

Agreed on interesting buildcraft and being an addition to weapon skills when running with focus since focus offers utility by itself.

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

I completely disagree that instant kill burst that is made up for by pretty much 100% chance to die after is interesting or adds depth to pvp.

First, the point that it gives ele a unique role in pvp. It doesn’t really because even full zerker fresh air borders on being unviable for tpvp (I’d say it is and I’d much rather have a balanced ele that doesn’t insta-die on my side if I must have an ele). Mostly because other glasscannons simply do it better. A thief has maybe 70-80% of the burst a full zerker fresh air ele has, but that burst is repeatable every ~10 seconds and that thief also has like 90% more defense because of stealth and/or evades and blinds while the ele has nothing after he did his 1 combo. So thief is preferred because he doesn’t transform the game in a 4vs5 for the next ~50 seconds after he used his burst (that while less than fresh air is still more than good enough).

Second, the point that it adds depth to pvp. I’d say it does the complete opposite. Too much instant cast spells are always bad for MMOs because they simply have no counterplay. You either are lucky and dodge at the right time and live (and the ele dies most probably) or you aren’t and you’re instantly down without any chance to react.
That’s simply not fun game design and, while the ele combo if not macro’d might take some form of skill, the whole binary state of the gameplay takes away a lot of skill through counterplay and the usual back-and-forth of 1v1s and teamfights.

And again I think that binary state is what makes it boring to watch in a tournament too. You can assume that top players have a 100% chance of landing the combo through muscle memory, so the only variable in the gameplay is wheter the enemy happens to hit dodge at the exact moment he needs to live of not.

Thieves have comparable burst, but do it far slower. They need a second or two, while an elementalist needs less and can therefore bypass the usual ‘clinging onto life’ with endure pains/mist/renewed focus/……

You oversimplify. As I said before, the combo always has some form of telegraph.

The counter to it is not in reactive play but in proactive play. Focus the ele, be aware of where he is, bring strong resurrect abilities,…

The 100 percent chance to die is ridiculous ofcourse, but the fact that there is a high chance again adds depth. Can I stomp the person the ele nuked in time? Can I provide enough support/peel to keep him alive.

Saying the combo will be landed 100 percent of the time is equally silly, as with a better ele comes a better opponent.

Since it is an entirely unique build on the scale of risk/reward, it’s hard to defend that taking it away would not be removing depth. You now have a person running around in the game that can instantly flip the back and forth teamfight in anyone’s favor.

I don’t think the ‘dodge or die’ mechanic is necessarily bad. If anything I feel like there’s too much prolonged bunkering and extended cluttered teamfights, but I’ll admit that’s highly subjective.

We’re not gonna agree on this, and that’s not a problem. You feel like having the possibility of an instant kill, no matter how gimmicky, is bad game design due to it bypassing so much of the regular fight, I feel like it’s interesting game design due to it being insanely high risk/reward, and also (not gonna lie) because it’s very spectacular.

“If you use a all-out zerker fresh air build and use the whole instant combo, you’re pretty much oneshotting every class in pvp. Though the rotation is mostly macroed and of course makes you deadweight for the next ~50 seconds because all your air, earth and utility skills are on cooldown, you have no stunbreak and no more damage left.”

I’m following you on this one.

“It’s a dumb build”

And on this one.

“When eles are capable of complete instant kills – no matter if they are deadweight after – other classes surely aren’t supporting our claims that we need defensive buffs.”

But not on this one. You measure a build by its overall effectiveness, not by how spectacular its tricks are. I think its fine the elementalist, having the lowest stats in the game, can do the highest burst damage in the game, when completely disregarding all notion of defense. It gives PvP extra depth. In its current version, thieves absolutely rule any and all notion of this role, since they have a MUCH easier time escaping/resetting. Let thief be the ‘safe’ bet, and Scepter burst ele be the all-in bet. At least that’s a unique position the ele can fill. People would have to be aware of where the ele is at, and anticipate the burst (it’s never 100% instant or else it’s not 100-0), play on their toes. There is too much easymode in the current meta. Petting zoos, condispam, healing signet. Add this depth, this fear of getting instantly destroyed, ‘where is the ele and what is he doing’.

It’s easier to make ele be able to do something no other class can, than it is to make ele be able to do what other classes can, while not being either better or worse at them.

Not to mention this is SO awesome to watch. I know many have given up on the Esport thing, and I don’t mind, but the last time an ele played in a tournament I watched (something like a month ago), naturally he was getting all the attention, since he played ele in a competitive tournament. The gates opened on foefire, guardians on both teams went mid, some other splits I can’t remember. Meanwhile the mesmer and ele got onto mid in stealth and oneshot the enemy bunker guardian from stealth using coordination.

So TL;DR:

For the sake of depth and an interesting pvp experience, this build should not be deleted. Even if other professions complain, they have been and always will be complaining about backstabbing thieves for all eternity.

My words were all over the place on this one, hope you get what I mean.

About the elite: I’d just like for it to have an active useful for non-condi specs, but I’m fine with how you propose it.

The double layer thing is probably the biggest one. You have cooldowns on top of cooldowns in the form of attunement recharges.

Besides that, it’s probably extra hard to play because it is a bit underpowered at the moment. If it had some minor buffs it wouldn’t be that much harder to play than other classes

How could you have 8 level 80s and have no idea how an ele is usually built/works? o.O

Direct damage is better for elementalist, although condi kinda works too (not in sPvP or Pve though)

D/D is very mobile, but melee so takes more damage innately and therefore harder to play (and requires defensive investment)

S/D is very offensive with some very bursty combos that will make mobs explode, but lacks defense to reliably make people explode.

S/F is a slightly more sensible/defensive option that still has great bursts, but lacks the aoe dmg/cc of an OH dagger. Has much more defense in invulns/reflects.

Staff is a support control oriented weapon meant to stay at range. Can do crazy damage when built offensively but due to slow cast times and animations is pretty hard to hit people with unless on nodes.

Some cool ideas in here. This one’s probably my favorite:

Air XI – Tempest Defense
- Now also increases damage against launched enemies and enemies knocked back by 20% so more abilities (e.g. Updraft) can enable the bonus.

Would you please explain why arcane skills as they currently stand are bad for the game? I for one liked the little bit of depth the auto crit aspect brought to buildcraft, and would hate to see it go. Are eles oneshotting people really so common that they have started to make people mad?

I like the efforts towards making the condi ele viable, but I feel like signets are a more apparent choice to steer towards being mainly condi-oriented, rather than arcanes, since written in stone is in the condi line, and condis promote a more bunkery playstyle due to requiring less stat investments.

The elite sounds cool, but still not very powerful. What about a signet that refreshes all you attunements on activation, or grants all boons, much like lyssa runes do. Feels like it makes a little more sense, although it would probably be too strong.

The SoR buff is absolutely too massive, but as you said, I won’t focus on numbers.

A good post overall! Definitely some less common suggestions too

I’d remove it and replace it by an aura-related trait.

Like auras last 25 percent longer, gain an aura based on attunement when using a heal skill, using an aura removes a condition, gain frost aura for 2 seconds on water attune,…

Increase the active heal at the cost of adrenaline perhaps? This would further reinstate using your healing signet as a ‘now or never’ option, as not only are you throwing away your health regen for a spike heal, you’re also using up your adrenaline.

This would allow for the active to be made significantly stronger.

Other options would be to have its active be a counter to bursty damage, which is the weakness the passive brings. Have it be a lengthy channel that blocks (e.g.: shelter) or have it boost toughness or grant protection on use for a short time.

Not sure if removing this sort of counterplay to signet is a good idea, and in all reality, a warrior’s massive base stats make bursty damage of little threat to a warrior anyway. I’m more in favor of the heal at the cost of adrenaline version.

reikken.4961:

assuming you build NO defense, such that heals and regen, and even protection, aren’t that useful,

defense on staff:
arcane shield
BURNING RETREAT (how did you not mention the BEST mobility skill we have?)
projectile reflect
and a slew of disables. chill, immob, stun, knockback
and a lot of range, that those disables can help keep you at
also a nice (but very long cooldown) multi condition cleanse

for d/f
arcane shield
obsidian flesh
projectile reflect (that also clears 3 conditions!)
projectile block
and a slew of disables: chill, immob, stun, knockdown, daze

for s/f:
see d/f but replace stun with blind

I don’t feel that dagger off hand supports glassy builds in their efforts to stay alive

I agree that dagger offhand is not the greatest choice for a GC build, where as focus makes a lot more sense.

Mash Hog.5672:

Gokil.2543:

Auras! Invaluable tools for defense, and often the reason why you’re still alive when you’re thinking how the hell am I surviving this. Just the effect of people running at 33 percent movement speed behind you when using frost aura, effectively nullifying their damage when they are melee classes.

Mid-range is also quite an important one. Many of our D/D skills exceed melee range by a good bit, which is essential to stand a chance against melee monsters like warriors, guardians and thieves.

One more, not so obvious but mildly important: PBAoEs that allow us to run in every direction we want while doing all our damage. Meaning fire 4, earth 2/4, water 3.
So what this means is while fighting classes, we are not restricted to circle-strafing while attacking, like all other classes are, but can run through or away from our opponent while using any of the aforementioned skills, while our opponent suffers from having to 180 his camera, or try to CC/gap close us to be able to trade. I hope this makes sense. Not gonna lie it’s not THAT big of a deal but it certainly helps. Not having to keep your camera locked on your target at all times certainly helps optimize your ability to trade damage in short bursts.

Obviously this is talking from a D/D point of view.

It’s actually 66% reduced movement speed

Hence why I said at 33% speed

I am confused, in the OP you talk about losing ground-targetting, while in your reply you say you want to keep it as a ground AoE spell. So do you want to make it a PBAoE then? Cause that doesnt make too much sense on a ranged weapon to me.

Edit: talking about shatterstone btw

Please do.

So many good propositions are being lost because people are posting furious walls of text and completely unrealistic changes. Try to keep changes in the scope of a regular patch.

Thanks

From the sticky:

Be concise. Our time is limited and we can’t read walls of text because it will prevent us from having the time to read as many posts as possible. Bullet points or numbered lists are very easy for us to read!

Be mindful of scope. It takes design, development and testing time in order to make a new feature or revise an old one. Keep scope/work/time/resources in mind when you make your suggestions.

Your suggestions are far too drastic to be realistic.

Orpheal.8263:

Mod deleted my posting, cause I should post something more “concise” and not so “derailing” cough … ok, so here again in concise, when my postign was clearly not derailing, it was about the topic, but I guess this was meant, because that other thread was all about Healign Signet only, so here an own thread for what I’ve posted now in concise :

- Slow Warriors Down, reduce their ranges of Rush/Leap Skills or make their Cooldowns longer, they absolutely should be able to outrun everybody, especially not Thieves in much lighter medium Leather Armors, while they are packed full of heavy Metal Armors. Just makes common sense!

- Reduce Hundred Blade Damage or link its current Power to a Grand Master Trait needed to equip, so that Warriors have to lose something different for such insane Damage via Great Swords as a Counter Balance.

- Add to their Adrenaline System a new Condition of Exhaustion that temporarely disables Warriors to receive new adrenaline, after using an Adrenaline Skills, therefore can become Adrenalien SKills slightly more powerful/impactful. Exhaustion can be removed by Condition Cleaners, but this means Warriors would have to waste their Condition Cleaner for getting quicker again new Adrenaline.

- Make their other Weapons more iunteresting, because currently 90% of all Warriors just run around with Great Swords only,because its the only real useful Weapon for them, that is also powerful due to its high insane DPS you can get with Hundred Blades, which is just out of reach for all thre other Weapons which can’t even get to half of the DPS, that you can get with Hundred Blades and that for cheap 8 seconds of colldown time, which makes this skill totally overpowered.
Hundred Blades should get moved to SKill Number 5 with like 20 seconds of Recharge Time and GS #2 should become a new Skill, like some kind of Thrust Attack with that you can hit multiple foes in a line and launch them back or like some kind of Jump Attack similar like the Guardians Leap of Faith, but just with a different effect and remove theirfore the Rush Skill and replace it with some kind of defensive Counter Attack Skill with that you can block an attack to counter it with some kind of Whirlwind Slash that could suck nearby foes in that could deal also a condition like bleedign or torment.

Why don’t you just delete the warrior while you’re at it o.O

I do not mean to offend you in any way, but the fact that you are still amazed by how ‘great’ of a skill hundred blades is, shows that you have a bit more to learn about this game. Warrior can come off as very impressive to new players due to the simplicity and ease of learning to play one effectively, however that’s also their Achilles tendon, as you more easily learn how to deal with them effectively in return.

These changes are completely unrealistic, and out of scope. Sorry

Conncept.7638:

You’re changes are blatantly favoring one play style and disregarding another as expendable.

The scepter is NOT solely a power burst weapon, in fact it’s specifically designed as a condition weapon across nearly the entire skillset, the air attunement being the only exception. We have 20 skills for a reason, when you build largely for a certain attunement others are going to be less effective, that’s part of having a variable build system.

Fire, earth, and water are all dedicated to conditions. Fire and water especially needs to be better at applying conditions, not worse, and especially not changed in to power-based attunements.

That said, I do believe that the scepter needs a lot of work, especially as I said, the fire and water attunement, but I don’t see why the Elementalists principal (and practically solitary) option for conditions should be sacrificed to that end.

Fresh air isn’t the only scepter build. Burst is not the only damage type.

What on earth are you talking about?! Nothing about the condition-potential of the scepter was even touched. Burning from scepter autoattack improved, torment was added to shatterstone and a new possibility for a burning combo has opened with the new version of hurl. Earth autoattack wasn’t touched either.

Literally, what are you talking about, cause it’s certainly not this.

Auras! Invaluable tools for defense, and often the reason why you’re still alive when you’re thinking how the hell am I surviving this. Just the effect of people running at 33 percent movement speed behind you when using frost aura, effectively nullifying their damage when they are melee classes.

Mid-range is also quite an important one. Many of our D/D skills exceed melee range by a good bit, which is essential to stand a chance against melee monsters like warriors, guardians and thieves.

One more, not so obvious but mildly important: PBAoEs that allow us to run in every direction we want while doing all our damage. Meaning fire 4, earth 2/4, water 3.
So what this means is while fighting classes, we are not restricted to circle-strafing while attacking, like all other classes are, but can run through or away from our opponent while using any of the aforementioned skills, while our opponent suffers from having to 180 his camera, or try to CC/gap close us to be able to trade. I hope this makes sense. Not gonna lie it’s not THAT big of a deal but it certainly helps. Not having to keep your camera locked on your target at all times certainly helps optimize your ability to trade damage in short bursts.

Obviously this is talking from a D/D point of view.

By far the most sensible propositions on this forum so far. Honestly, I’m sitting here amazed

Q: Is your reworked version of shatterstone going to be single-target? Will you be able to dodge either application of torment or the shattering application of chill effect? If I understand correctly you intend to make it somewhat like warrior impale?

Q: Is the 10 percent damage reduction on phoenix called for? Overall your propositions would hardly buff the scepter, just make it so much more fun and versatile to play. Also, adding 1 condition remove per ally it passes through will not warrant using it as a supportive tool due to it being the strongest offensive spell on scepter, so any use out of this new feature would be coincidental, agreed? I feel like the vigor makes more sense thematically.

What if we add vigor and retaliation on allies it passes through, plus the condition removal. That would allow for phoenix to become so much more. Essentially a doubly important spell, allowing for much more depth in its placing and arcing it through allies on return. Naturally its damage would need toning down in this case.