Guild Wars 2

mas.7401:

When I saw that a guild mission was to escort dolyaks, and you needed three people for each one. I knew how disconnected ANET was from WvW players.

They need to remove that requirement. No only does it not make much sense, as it always have been a single “steward’s task” for Siege & Defense players, it will also encourage more players in the guilds to do this guild mission for more Commendations and Resonance Slivers you need for crafting.

To make WvW players less dependent on farming mats for tactics and improvements, they should add a “buy once a day for Karma option” to the NPC that sells those Badges of Tribute in our GH.

e.g. (not really calculated market value, just an idea)
>> one time a day: Buy 1x “Linen Supply Sack” for x Karma
>> one time a day: Buy 1x “Bag of Lumber” for x Karma (or Ore, Cloth, Flax, Pigments)

It could offer a Karma sink for WvW players, adding an additional “in game mode” for getting materials and slow down those inflated prices of materials on the TP.

Nocturnal Lunacy.8563:

I thought anet hadn’t implemented this yet.

Referring to this ?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/World-vs-World-Holiday-Sneak-Peek

Old (pre HoT) upgrades to “towers”:
>> Coin unlocked the upgrade that required a set amount of supply to arrive via dolyaks

Current (HoT) upgrades to “towers”:
>> Auto upgrade via timer, no supply required (so dolly upgrade does not increase the upgrade speed), arriving dolyaks take away 5 min off the timer.

Plans for upgrades (see link above):
>> The timer remains, but is not ticking down automatically; the number of arriving dolyaks reduces the timer.

What remains uncertain, due to lack of info:
>> Will the new mechanic still use a timer (with minutes) or a number of required dolyaks (which could make more sense)?
>> Will increased supply delivery or a supply drop reduce the timer twice as fast (or count as two dollys)?
>> Will there be changes escort rewards, as dollys become more important (and dolly escorts have always been very badly rewarded)?
>> Will camp upgrades be changed too, as arriving dollies trigger progression with camps (and killing all leaving dollies will also prevent the camp progression, which could mean you could kill all dollies to prevent any upgrades if the auto timer is removed)

We need to hear more about the subject to know for sure.

Whatever last night’s update did, it “undocumentedly” fixed the repeatable Wintersday achievements not counting towards the meta on my account (not that it is still needed any more here, after I haven’t heard from support for a week & I bought candy to get my 18).
I hope it has fixed the issues on other accounts as well.

Arriving dolyaks reduce the auto-upgrade-timer by 5 min, so two dollys arriving at the garrison, at almost at the same time, make the timer “jump” 10 min ahead.
This is not a bug.

The last two years, the repeatable achievements counted once, after the first full cycle. Extra repetitions only gave you APs, but no meta advancement.
This year, neither Toypocalypse or the Bell Choir did advance me on the meta track. I have not finished the PvP track completely once (30 wins).
With the two Tixx dungeon achievements still missing, I am currently at 15/18. (never ever finished the JP).
I am not fond of getting one of the money tracks this time and I would like to know if the repeatable track not counting on its first cycle is intentional or a bug.

I’ve just finished watching this week’s Guild Chat and Ruby has created my personal “Sad Town” – The guild hall without any Wintersday decorations.

Why, you might ask? Because she said that decorations will require Scribing lvl 75 and the items to create will scale up the more fancy they get.
For devs or people that scribe for large guilds that might not be a major problem, but for all the small guilds out there, that already struggle with getting in resources and funding their scribes (it’s those people constantly begging for flax, sand and potatoes), this is a very bad idea.
Why can’t we get some basic stuff from the special vendor that offered the Pumpkins on Halloween for e.g. those tons of Tiny Snowflakes we get from the harvesting tools? It even has a themed synergy with Wintersday.
Why can’t the entry level be lower, so we can have basics from the vendor, them start at lvl 25, lvl 50 and then reach lvl 75, offering at least a bit of decorations to our barren guild halls.

Please lower the requirement to get at least basic Wintersday decorations to our guild halls and allow us to have a bit of fun there – take a first step to fix your completely broken scribing costs.

• How many people are in your guild, and how many of them participate in World vs World?

>> An active core of around 12 in a PvX orientated guild (and about 4 times inactive, or non regular representing members), Active WvW players are down to about 4 since HoT.

• Do you find any of the Auras from claiming essential?

>> Not essential for basic game play, but at least something you have to pay for only once. +Attribute or +5 Supply seem to be out of reach for us.

• How many World vs World upgrades has your guild earned, what level are they, and how close are they to getting +5 Supply, in particular? Do you feel it is achievable? How much have they spent?

>> We currently have Camp Claiming and Aura 1 unlocked; The “daylight robbery upgrades” + charges from Scribing we will not get, unless Anet reduces the “charges” to something very cheap (from its insane status now) or to a time based thing (see below); We will never unlock the +5 Supply, we could easily use before HoT.

• How has your guild been obtaining the upgrades? Do you feel that this has taken time away that you would have rather been playing World vs World? Please be specific, such as “I spent 5 hours getting shovels”, etc.

>> WvW gameplay does provide nothing for GH upgrades; Badges we still have from before HoT, Flax comes once or twice from the pitiful harvesting nodes in the structures per day and we have a total of 6 Heavy Supply bags in the treasury now (an item Anet had to re-introduce, because it slipped through QA – like Vet slayer and ruin capper dailies); 99% of guild upgrades are provided by more or less grindy PvE play and taking stuff out of hoards of players (including gold for tons of Runes of Holding). I have taken charge of guild upgrade management and “begging” for donations. It eats up most of my in-game time (mostly PvE) and has reduced my WvW time to easy dailies for a few weeks now.

• How has the new system impacted you and your guild’s playing experience in World vs World? Would you prefer the new system or the pre-HoT system?

>> Seeing we need to research Claiming (for free once) and recharge Tactics and Improvements with insane costs is dumb (just compare the cost of a Supply Drop to just waiting …) As a small guild we feel robbed of our former possibilities.
The new (unlock) system is OK (in the long run), even the crazy unlocks in the War Room are tolerable to an extend, but recharge costs have to go completely and be replaced either with a timer or a timed resource that has to work like the guild mine Aetherium gain (which you can speed up to be 10% or 20% faster). Stop making us grind mats to enrich the WvW gameplay ! In terms of “new system / auto upgrade” experiences, dolly escorts are pretty pointless and the automatic WP in Fire and Air Keep have changed a lot. I think people need to treat home BL more like EB, where you should hold your corner (in all 4 maps now).

• If you could change one thing about the Guild upgrade system, what would it be?

>> see last paragraph + re-work Scribing costs completely. Guild decorations are as insane as WvW upgrades. Precursor crafting looks almost good to what we have now in Scribing.

I will not speculate about others, just talk about what I expected from WvW pre HoT:

After the blog post about the tactical buffs, I was looking forward to focusing on Dolly and Camp upgrades for my guild. We could have faster, stronger dollies to help out with upgrading structures. Camps could get the chilling fog to slow down roamers, while we run back and save the camp, leaving our enforced dolly, who could probably fend off an attack for a while.

When HoT appeared, the first thing in WvW I noticed how fast dollies run now, so why using speed buffs at all? Another thing was the inability for us to claim a camp, which always is a boost to morale and we wanted to get that +5 Supply buff as soon as possible.
The sobering experience came quickly.
War Room stuff required a lot of other Guild Hall upgrades (not really a problem, but a delay). Camp claiming required another upgrade (wait, that was for free before). Tactics not only required an expensive unlock, but an insanely high mat cost for each “charge” you create. I was really that naive that I thought the tactic would be reusable after an internal recharge timer expired. And the +5 Supply? One of the last things to unlock at all.
With GH upgrades requiring Flax and Sand farmers in VB, Potato farmers in Metrica and character progression a hunt for mastery points, the WvW priorities dropped.

Right now I can’t really do more with my Badges than before the update. The daily chest turns into an automated consumable buff (which I use in HoT for my XP gain for mastery progression) and most of my guildies that formally at least dropped in for a few easy dailies are ignoring Veteran kills, Shrine & Sentry caps altogether, because they find the map too confusing (a vertical map that does no show clear paths to get from A to B really did not help at all).
My guild has turned away from even considering those overpriced tactics and will go for the claim Auras max – but other upgrades are just more useful (e.g. the Barkeeper potions).

PS: Has nobody wondered, why it is more expensive to unlock Tower Claiming than Keep Claiming, when it comes to the amount of Runes of Holding?)

While I think that this would be a nifty feature, the treasurer needs two other things even more:

1. Flag priority donations
With easily three dozen item slots to confuse guildies, it would be great if you could either set some materials as “high priority” donations or “low priority” donations. Without an improvement for guild messaging (e.g. a permanent window, for e.g. TS urls or long term schedules and the daily log in pop up message we have now), this could show guild members what is needed more than other things to keep upgrading a smooth process.

2. Some sort of notification system to show, when an upgrade is ready to be unlocked.
With all buildings on the map, it is easy to miss seeing that an upgrade has all the requirements fulfilled to be unlocked. Can’t we get the “old school” GW1 exclamation mark over the NPCs or a message system (new NPC, notification in treasury tab etc.) when an upgrade is ready?

The fact that guild improvements (not talking about siege) like all the “Tactivator” buffs use “charges”, makes the system completely broken and undesirable to use.
Seriously, I thought in the beginning it will be an unlock feature that you can use again and again, once you have put mats, gold and time into the upgrade.

Why does the system not use a cool down mechanic. Anet loves time gating stuff and in this case it would make sense.

e.g. “Sabotage Depot” would not be “charge” worth tons of gold (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Scribing:_Sabotage_Depot), but a buff that can be activated on claimed objective and goes on a 2h cool down if triggered.
An upgrade, like the increased Mining Rate could reduce a cool down by 10% for each tier of the upgrade.

WvW guilds could unlock that ONCE and then it would be up to the guild to decide whether they want to focus on more upgrades to slot or the same upgrades on a faster reset status.

You can not give each guild in the game a spot in the open world to populate or design. That is just impossible. Narrowing it down to which guild is the largest, most evolved etc. to compete for e.g. 10 slot s is even worse.

What makes the guild halls empty are completely different reasons:
>> Not much ambience unless you unlock a lot of building
>> No guild missions inside the guild hall (e.g. a daily activity)
>> No social activities located there, e.g. a free Belcher’s Bluff table at the Tavern
>> No non-scribe crafting tables (you still have to craft in WvW or open world, than travel to the GH to deposit to treasury)
>> fun stuff locked behind silly amounts of upgrade costs (Decoration Merchant)
>> Scribe profession can’t do anything fun for guildies that is not insanely overpriced

The guild hall has become a synonym for a massive gold & material sink the past three weeks, not a fun place to be with guildies and friends. Unless Anet adds more fun and less “bottomless pits” to the GH, it will be a lonely place forever.

JRM.6218:

Do you mean while “Salvage damaged armaments to build bombs” event?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Salvage_damaged_armaments_to_build_bombs

Yes, this event.

I found a solution to “Ongoing Defense” myself today:

During the airship salvage phase at the Ordnance chain of events, the Pact Towers get attacked by five waves of Hylek, which will destroy the towers. THIS is the event you must be doing for “Ongoing Defense”.

Dear ArenaNet devs, just add a bit to text to the achievements description to give players a hint when to take care of the towers. What about:
“Defend one of the completed Pact towers when it falls under attack during daytime.”

Still no idea about Bark Breaker.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Verdant_Brink_%28achievements%29

Wiki does not yet list any additional information on those two Verdant brink Achievements, so i am asking for your help

1. Ongoing defense
Defend one of the completed Pact towers when it falls under attack.

I have done two complete event chains from building the towers from scratch to upgrading it toT5 and defended each one successfully (so no set backs). Yet, I have not gotten the achievement. I don’t know what to do differently, so what is the secret to this (if it is not bugged somehow)?

2. Bark Breaker
Break a Husk’s defiance bar while escorting Laranthir.

My problem seems to be to find a husk that has a break bar at all. The normal ones don’t have break bars and the ones that you can snipe from above when the bombs are planted do not scale up. Do I miss a “hidden Husk” on the way or do you need to scale up the event massively to make a Husk with a break bar spawn ?

Thanks for helping.

TBH, I have no idea how the acquisition of shovels from bonus chests in SW has been nerfed, but I do not see Shovels as the main problem for small guilds.
You only need Mine 1 if you are patient. (get Mining rate 1 a bit later)
For my small guild Kegs & Mugs (= Linseed Oil & Coarse Sand) are a much larger problem than the Shovels have been.

What is even dedicated WvW players currently steering off the maps?

They need to work in the new HoT maps and Dry Top for materials for their guild halls.

You want to reward WvW players better?
Add a merchant to the home BL spawn merchant corner that sells each of these packs once a day for Badges:
>> Oiled Supply Pack – 5 Linseed Oil
>> Coarse Supply Pack – 50 Coarse Sand
>> Pigment Supply Pack – 10 Pouches of a random coloured Pigment

The Packs can be used to augment basic scribing and upgrade needs for the guilds. This would allow WvW players to skip farming in Dry Top (Sand) and HoT maps (Flax) and also the need to buy overpriced Pigments for scribing kits.

The time gate factor is needed so veteran players can not buy stuff for their thousands of Badges they have at the moment.

It would also open up the possibility for PvP guilds or PvE guilds to do WvW dailies and game play more often as they get an alternative to repetitive farming.

Nobody mentioning the “automatic XP buff”?

I find that highly annoying, because in many cases, the character that got the WvW daily is not the one that should get the XP buff after opening the chest.
I currently do not open the chests right away, but put them into storage (they are account bound), so that the character playing in HoT areas (e.g.) can get the buff for levelling masteries.
It is one extra step that is just unnecessary.

The individual rewards are completely random it seems.

PvP (easy variant this week)
>> Guild reward given, individual rewards either not happening at all for team mates or in my case, was granted, but missed the Resonating Sliver.
>> Also, there is nothing in the description that says the mission requires a minimum Rank (or how high this rank should be). At least for the easy missions, there should be no rank barrier.

PvE (guild rush)
>> One out of six participating guildies got individual rewards when we did it in Diessa last week. The rest did get nothing.

WvW (camp defend)
>> The description needs a change, because holding the camp does not require an actual guild claim (only possible with War Room) and will fail if the circle was challenged even for one split second (unlike the Defense events in the old Alpine BL)

After having done four guild missions, to earn Favour over the last two weeks, I only got 2 Slivers.

Please fix

Well, although I have the rights to change music, I can’t change any music permanently in the GH. It stays on the initial music I chose when unlocking it. So this effects not only The Cavern music, but all others as well. (Gilded Hollows)

Zaoda.1653:

Canopy over Noble Crash Site Hero Challenge is bugged for me. On my map it says it’s incomplete (as it says ‘earn 10 hero points’), but when I’m actually there, it says I’ve gained all I can from it.

https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/209853/gw2_small_bug.png
The same happened in my case too.

I also did not get any retroactive rewards for 100% Southsun Cove, Dry Top, or Silverwastes, if there are any.

When I put my first 60 points into the Druid line, the pop up chest with the Druid staff did not appear.
As a result of that, the Yggdrasil collection did not unlock.

I did that in the Heart of the Mists, which might have been the issue. All other things did unlock in PvE zones.
Logging in and out did not help

To be honest, I think we should just get both of the skins unlocked, when we have reached certain LS story steps (Act 1 & 2 of Shadow of the Mad King), because many of us have transmuted those back items for better stats when the Orr back items came a few months later and “lost the look”, because Wardrobe did not unlock the skin when that update that missed transmuted skins.
Those who earned it in the past get it unlocked, period.

New players or those who missed the event should be able to purchase it for 5 Laurels each.

I get like 1-3 chests a day since the patch. No keys.

I am a bit worried about the prices to get guild stuff when it comes to smaller guilds:
>> gold : OK, individual members can contribute without an effect on the economy (e.g. dungeon runs), but setting 100g to unlock the GH with the exploration and this is only the entry level of things?

>> materials : just look at 500 10 slot iron boxes to start out with. Runes are not impacting the economy but iron? While iron is not that hard to get (not ignoring the 37s price for one box according to wiki right now – still hefty price for the complete stack), the impact on T2 fabrics & leather will be way more significant (already troubled by ascended crafting)

>> favour : The three people minimum requirement is OK, but I’d say slowing small guilds down already. Do not forget you have time windows on the guild missions and small guilds either can’t repeat again until success because of limited members or limited time slots their members can meet.

What I would really like to see is the “time factor” playing into the upgrades. If you want to get upgrades fast and rush towards a fully upgraded GH, go for it at “full price”. If you are working on it gradually, prices of upgrades should deteriorate to perhaps half the price after a while, so in the end even small guilds get a chance to get their upgrades.

What I fear will happen is: Large guilds are pushing fast to get upgrades and can do it because of shared costs + buying stuff off the TP (and therefore making prices of mats spike), while small guilds will actually have to talk about guild taxes and try to force their members into doing guild missions out side their comfort zone (e.g. PvP or WvW) to get at least drops of favour to progress and upgrade.

Mix Soldier + Cele and get Berserker (especially if you run D/D and not staff) makes a very viable combination of stats, do not listen to the zerker crowd.
Like you said, you are often one of the people standing and rezzing the Zerker metas that messed up their dodge rolls or you can be a diversion for others to break off combat to wait for their heal skill to recharge. In WvW groups you will not melt within a second and you will be able to reposition yourself.
Stick with the set if you like it.

I tend to agree with a lot of the criticism and feed back here on the thread.

If I had to change just one thing about Tempest right now, I’d take a look at the Warhorn which should get the 20% reduction back on traits, the general boon sharing and a few more small tweaks (a little damage tweak, a visual indication of AoE paths, them not working on uneven surfaces etc.)

I felt bad for the Tempest specs that I encountered during WvW roaming on my normal Ele and in unranked Arenas both on my Ele and Engi.
While I learned to fear the Reaper (so much chill is never good on Ele) and hated the Scrapper (stealth and stomp Gyro in 1vs1), the Tempest and its Overloads never felt like a real danger to me. It was just another AoE I dodged away from and learned to not CC during Overload due to the stability buff most ran.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Call_of_the_Mists

Does not apply to any part of the game that does not follow the “normalization rules of equipment” like al weapons are exotic and you wear an amulet instead of armour.

Since WvW uses PvE equipment, you do no get the buff.
That does not mean that a +15% bonus to WXP would not be appreciated, Anet Dev’s just never included it in the buff.

No

(Reason: The game already has enough weapons that make bar stools look like they are more balanced for fighting than those weapons; There is no reason to add another oversized impractical contraption to the list)

PVE:

I played around with a Water/Earth Tempest D/D Aurashare with Signets + Rebound and it was OK (although it needs to be tested with a party of friend to get a true feeling of Auras + the healing the build procs are noticible).
I went with Signets, because choosing the micromanagement of a) regular D/D rotation, b) maximizing Overload efficiency, or c) trying to proc as many Auras as possible was enough for me.

I still have problems finding a WH build (D/WH or S/WH) that makes me feel I am doing something smooth and useful I can’t get with D/D or S/x anyway.

Sadly I can’t make comparison to BWE2, because the initial instance + the maps seems to be toned down significantly, as e.g. those Mordrem Snipers are completely gone from the instance and less common in the open world.

Experienced:
21 FPS in Gendaran Fields (stable)
62 FPS in PvP Lobby (heavily populated)
36 FPS in WvW home BL
21 again in LA

Nothing has changed on my PC since yesterday’s patch rolled out.

For me the changes announced so far have been a two edged sword:
>> Some nerf to D/D had to come, so working on Ring of Fire is OK. On the other hand RoF was only strong if you were dumb enough to cross the line a few times. It kind of got dumbed down a bit with the initial burn inside the circle.
>> Drake’s Breath is OK of a nerf, but what I do not get is that burning in general has not been touched. If you take a look at Guardian, those insane burn stacks are still intact.
>> Blinding Ashes with its internal CD increased is OK, Burning Fire is a much needed nerf to Cantrips.
>> Dragon’s Tooth being ground targeted should be a buff to Scepter, although targeting siege in WvW won’t work anymore and was out of line (of sight) anyway.
>> Like I posted in another thread, I would have like to see the nerf-bat on the Vigor duration of Soothing Disruption instead of Renewing Stamina to “normalize” Vigor gain (and this also addressed the Minor / Major trait discrepancy with Guard & Mes traits). Making Renewing Stamina weaker hits all builds on the Ele and not only the ones that need a shave.

We still need to wait on all the Scepter changes to be announced, to say something about them, but anything that makes Scepter better is fine. Glyph of Elementals is very good, the Icebow nerf might be two steps too far, as the max 3 targets seems unnecessary to me. They pretty much Smiter’s Boon’ed the skill.

Because of the difference of Renewing Stamina being a major trait (unlike the Guard & Mes one) I would have liked to see the Vigor duration on Soothing Disruption being reduced by 2 seconds – and not the “normalize” on Renewing Stamina. That would have also helped getting the dominance of Cantrips in line on the utility bar.

Mostly a question to the ArenaNet Devs skimming the forum threads:

When I look at the calender and the roundabout 4 weeks until the planned release of HoT (including Twitch Con, another Stronghold weekend and the final PvE beta), I wonder whether we will get any preview/update on …

… the Scribe crafting profession (e.g. will it be like regular crafting profession from 1-400? Will levelling include XP gain though non directly GH related items you can make too? what is an example recipe? etc.)…
… WvW abilities (normalization of existing abilities and adding new ones. e.g. for those shield turrets)…
… the time line of changes not included in HoT (like raids, which will start a few weeks later because the requirement of masteries)…

… before HoT comes out?
or in short: Will there be any “POI like” info release after Druid is covered the last few weeks or just a focus on the final beta?

As long as nobody here mentions Cantrips & their trait synergy with Soothing Disruption and Burning Fire, their arguments about “nerfing D/D cele Ele” are moot.
Those are the backbone of the performance of the build so many complain about.

Traits are only one half of the coin, the other one is the fact that our utility skills are so narrowed down to Cantrips, because they have been favoured with the best synergy (Burning Fire, Soothing Disruption), instant activation and stun break abilities. Arcane skills, Glyphs and to a lesser extent signets are just no that good.
All metabattle competitive builds run Cantrips on slots 7-9.

I agree that e.g the Guardian has pretty much meditation utility bars these days, but Eles seem to be stuck in the Cantrip line for PvP since launch.

PS: Anet Devs even made the skill synergy on Cantrips better by adding the 20% recharge to Soothing Disruption when they switched to the 3 trait line system in early summer.

Gambit.8425:

And at 20 stacks there’s no reason to even bother anymore, just wait on timer to end.

IMO, if you reach 20 stacks, you have nothing done except tagging and way-pointing.
I did an invasion together with a guildie today in Brisban and we almost did not get to 10, because we committed to staying at an event until it was finished.

The individual tags are a bad idea. The total number of events on the map should count, because that would encourage smart game play and coordination.
The worst thing of all is the example this invasion event gives to new players that came to GW2 after it went F2P, because they are encouraged to play selfishly, have to try to “steal bombs” from others players, get confused from hopping around WP they might not have unlocked to get higher stacks for rewards and might not be able to get rewards, because they are locked behind gold costs on top of the cost of blooms.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Elementalist_-_Dagger/Dagger
Trait lines:
Arcane: Renewing Stamina – Final Shielding (because I like the auto-defence, when something like a unseen attack happens from a Thief or a siege shot) – Evasive Arcana

Metabattle has a section on rotations too

When you have to chose to carry only one Warhorn on your Tempest as an off-hand weapon (so we are talking S/WH or D/WH), which prefix attribute stat works best with the skills on the Warhorn and the associated skills on it?

Heat Sync – no damage component; might boons
Wildfire – base damage component, burning condition

Tidal Surge – base damage component; long regeneration boon
Water Globe – healing component

Cyclone – base damage component; long swiftness boon
Lightning Orb – base damage component; vulnerability duration component

Sand Squall – no damage component; boon component
Dust Storm – base damage component; small condi duration component

I can currently see do gear set-up in game that helps us with boons (Giver’s), because our abilities to created and handle boons comes from our traits / trait lines.
With no big damage skills on the Warhorn (e.g. in comparison to Churning Earth or RTL), should the WH carry stats that augment the main hand weapon?

I am currently thinking that you should either put the same stats on it than you current off hand (Focus or Dagger) or just chose Celestial for it, because that helps you in general with your stats.

What are your thoughts on it? Am I missing something or got something wrong?

I guess you are talking about the “meta” D/D Cele Elementalist and its Water/Arcana/Cantrip setup.
Your main “protection” comes from the Water traits + Cantrips and not really from running Celestial gear, so mixing WvW armour (Soldier) and Knight’s trinkets (+ perhaps Beserker’s weapons) will give you gear quickly without the time-gate on making Celestial stuff.

What Cele gear does, is giving you a “Swiss army knife” while roaming alone when you rotation based primarily on Power/dps gets screwed up a bit (bad aggro of NPCs, sudden enemy jumping on you etc.) A bit more vitality and healing gives you time to react before getting downed, a bit more Condi damage makes your burns way more damaging.

In duelling other Eles, (not counting player skill) it is usually the Cantrip/Trait synergy of offensive & defensive properties that will make you win over Signet, Arcana or Glyph builds, because the later ones are not on par with what Cantrips/Trait synergy does.

Ideas to tweak Glyphs have been around for years now, but I am sure “Anet thinks they are in a good place now” (= we want you to play Cantrips in PvP only so forget about anything else; PvE please use staff in Fire attunement and be happy)

To all new players:
There are people out there, like me on the starter maps, that want to help you getting used to the game. We offer advice or will answer questions.
You can whisper us, by clicking on the name in chat with your left mouse (or by right clicking and getting the chat options).
I am telling that, because our offers for help get suppressed in map chat very fast by the game and since you as a new players can’t talk in map chat, the suppression will last a very long time (as we are the only ones trying to talk or can talk).

After having problems at log in, disconnected to log in servers during game (e.g. getting a message pop up and no seeing friend’s list etc.) and multiple connection losses during loading into maps (LA most of the time, since my characters are standing there) yesterday evening, the client isn’t even connecting to anything right now.
Just to be clear, everything else concerning internet connectivity is working fine (and had been working fine yesterday).

“Connection error(s) detected. Retrying…”

is all I can see right now.

+1 to what Wolfric.9380 said.

Two things a change to Ele for balancing (like that better than nerfing) should adress:
1. global mechanic problems => might and power of burning
2. Elementalist specific problems => Cantrip dominance/dependence over other skills

about 1:
>> shaving off a few percent from the basic burning formula would help, balancing other professions like Guardian as well.
>> now that Might buffs condi damage as well, perhaps it would also be helpful to reduce the power/condi gain from 25 to 20 per stack, so builds/runes/sigils outside might boon stacking would be promoted for more use.

about 2:
>> addressing the “Cantrip being too good problem” can be solved by making adjustments to Soothing Disruption and/or Burning Fire (although the dependence on SD and the water line is a bit more problematic IMO) or buffing the other traits like Inscription, Elemental Surge or Written in Stone. You could also mix the two measures.
>> For buffing less powerful specs I would like to see better condi options (perhaps a +10% Condi duration) or a Fear/Taunt/Resistance option for Glyphs to break some combos we fall prey upon if we don’t “bunker spec”.

If Anet tweaks the Ele anywhere outside adjusting Cantrips (and synergy with it) next, they are on the wrong boat and won’t help the profession at all.

Purely subjective POV or an Ele player:
For Dwayna’s love, do not reach for the optimized build when you are starting out!

To get a feeling for the class, do PvE first and get the flow for swapping your attunements for Fire, Air, Earth and Water. You will have the most fun with the class, when you develop a feeling for the rotations and combos yourself, not going for “macro like kill plan”.

Metabattle will help you to find the best build for PvP, that is true, but it also a very stale meta we are stuck in for over two years now. Your affection for the class will not develop there.

I am a bit tired of people asking for “an Ele nerf”, when they should ask for a nerf to the Cantrip/trait synergy that makes Eles strong. A general “nerf” (e.g. to skills, recharge, base heal of #6 skills etc.) will only make Ele players not running the “meta build” even less likely to have variety, fun and chances in a competitive environment.

>>That shout burning ALL the golems at once looked impressive, but I have the impression the limitation to five foes was not in place.
>> I am thinking the looping of the videos gave us the false impression of the power of warhorn skills and shouts, because you could not see the long cool downs. Actually play testing with long cool downs might change the “wow factor”.
>> the attunement cooldown working with the Arcana line to limit it to 14 seconds is neat
>> the Tempest looks like it can give some great support to a very coordinated group (party), but might suffer in PUGs or open world PvE., because allies might not actually appreciate the group support at all (old Gw1 Mesmer flaws over years) or “demand Rebounds” (on Icebow #4 e.g.)
>> for solo play in PvE and single roaming in WvW, the “core profession” with D/D or S/x still looks better without a final tweaking on numbers.
>> I just hope the “shouting” player character might not get too annoying with the sound files.

The biggest problem I see after reading the article and going through skills and traits is the fact that AoE CC and group support is not rewarding to play for yourself at the moment in pretty much all game types:
>> PvE (open world) – No need to play group support; In dungeons you get yelled at by PUGs when you tactically CC instead of Fire Field + Blast etc.
>> PvP (e.g. unranked arena) – you might do your party members something good, but you lose defense (no Focus and probably no super synergy Cantrips); Welcome to the world of under-appreciated Mesmer game play from Gw1 ?
>> WvW (big groups) – depending on how much choke points really make a difference on the new BL maps, we will have to see if Eles are really wanted to CC chokes or just go “Staff boom boom” in bigger groups which works well now.

Where can the Tempest shine?
With people you know and players you coordinate with (guild groups in all game types e.g.), but in my experience those adventures take a minority of your total game time. In HoT maps in the Maguuma jungle? We do not know how rewarding CC will be in open world content, adventures or against certain monster types.

In a nutshell:
Need to play test to make a true verdict; have doubts about effectiveness of mechanics compared to established meta roles of Eles.

Welcome to the game mate.

What can I say about my server, Aurora Glade that could interest you…
>> AG is a very international server, with people from all over Europe and quite a few South Africans as well, so our main map language is English.
>> We are known for hosting some community events often connected to seasonal in-game events, like Mad Queen’s Horrorween and other stuff (e.g. last week we had a fun event on Southsun Cove and in LA to celebrate the new look of the city)
>> The server has its own community funded website at www.auroragla.de, which is home to the event PvE event people and most of the organized WvW crowd.
>> The website also runs its own TS3 server for people on AG (mostly used for WvW).
>> In WvW, we are in the silver league, which is a good spot to get into WvW. AG has experienced PUG commanders, dedicated homeland defenders and some great WvW centric guilds for GvG and large scale fights. We don’t blob and k-train around maps and usually put up a good fight for others.

A lot of maps in GW2 are megaserver maps, so you can play with other people from EU servers too, e.g. for Dungeons or big world bosses that require coordination.

I am wondering if it is intentional that the treb can not shoot at the hero’s channeling spot? The shots explode in mid air as if they would hit an invisible wall.