Guild Wars 2

“You are dissecting the trait on it’s own and isolated as if it is the only trait taken.” of course, because it doesn’t have any synergy (like cleansing water has for example).
And why is everyone talking about other traits in the earth-tree? This thread is about DS. I for myself run 20 earth in most of my builds because ER without stability is suicide in PvP. Like I said, there are plenty of nice alternatives and therefore I wouldn’t even take DS if it was in a lower tier.

And you guys even say it yourself: “having EA would help a hell of a lot more”. So why would I take DS?

oZii.2864:

Gorni.1764:

So you say the trait is good because you killed 3 people in total while using it? What if I tell you that you could’ve killed them even faster without this trait?

This should be fun please tell me how I could have killed a P/D perplexity theif and S/S long bow warrior faster without the trait.

Then I will tell you how every trait you took that doesn’t increase dps would have killed them faster.

Do you tell everyone with points in arcana the same thing? Throw them all in fire and air and take stone splinters.

Traits in arcana are incredibly usefull, but not only in the first seconds of combat against certain classes with certain specs. They will always help you out, regardless which class you’re fighting. Besides, arcana has very good stats for eles with boon-duration and attunement-CD-reduction.
I agree that DS is usefull against condition-Necros, but that’s only 1 class out of 8 and only 1 or 2 specs out of many. It was specifically designed to counter them, so if it wouldn’t work against condi-Necros it would be even more of a joke. But why the heck would I ever pick a trait that’s only good against a small fraction of players – especially in a game where 1v1 is a rare thing?

For your warrior and thief-example: When a warrior can’t get and hold you below 90% HP he’s either kittened or bunker. Since you say he ran S/S long bow I assume he wasn’t pure bunker so it shouldn’t be a problem for him to deal ~1,5k damage and after that DS is completely useless against him. Same goes for thief. Once he knows that you use DS he might not open with blinds but with a single attack followed by blind to completely negate DS. I rarely play WvW (only sPvP) so I can’t say much about perplexety-thieves.

oZii.2864:

Then I will tell you how every trait you took that doesn’t increase dps would have killed them faster.

I had no specific traits in mind. But since condition-damage is quite useless for eles, 100 toughness won’t really let you live longer (and also the 25P-trait is nothing but a design-flaw) and DS won’t help you at all against well-played power-builds, nearly any trait would be better against any class besides condi-necro and maybe condi-engi – and against those it’s ridiculously overpowered, or let’s say “boring”.

I said it from the beginning when first reading about it in the pre-patchnotes that this trait won’t do anything but countering very specific builds because for everything else the threshhold is too low and in group-fights nobody will even notice that you’re running 30 earth (a shame the search-function doesn’t work in this forum – otherwise I’d have quoted a DEV saying that they consider lowering the threshhold to 85 or even 80%). Have you noticed how the whole crying about this trait immediately stopped after the patch went life? Now most eles want a complete redesign, not because it’s OP, but because it’s utterly useless.
Like cerevisiae said, I wouldn’t even pick it if it was a 10P-trait, because other choices are by far more usefull in most scenarios. As a grandmaster-trait, this is a joke.

I for myself tested this trait for many hours in Solo-Q, playing bunker to get the most out of it – and it still was ridiculously weak. You may convince me of the contrary with a video showing how usefull it is against anything except pure conditions-builds and how especially this trait saved your life or made you win a duell but I don’t think that anybody will succeed with this task ^^

So you say the trait is good because you killed 3 people in total while using it? What if I tell you that you could’ve killed them even faster without this trait?

I use to play Staff in Solo-Q lately. You still can’t really win 1v1 against skilled players but you can kite well with some points in water and arcane und you pretty much own in group-fights. I’d never go without Ether Renewal, Rock Solid and Evasive Arcana though. The new arcane-heal seems not to be that bad for staff, but it still heals by far less than other heals in most cases and the damage/blast-finisher can’t make up for the condition-removal from ER. My Build is 0-0-20-20-30 with Divinity Runes and Zerker Amulett.

Ele, because I don’t play to win, but to have fun. And though it got nerfed to the ground you can still do a nice amount of trolling with this class.
It’s the only class that actually has some real skillshots and has to perfectly use combo-fields and CDs to win in PvP – I like this challenge and the fluent playstyle of eles. When killing someone you actually know that you outplayed the enemy and didn’t win solely because your class is OP.
Every time I’ve tried other classes they bored me after some hours of play even though I might have been more effective with those.

First DEVs said that they’re going to be removed and people will only keep their rank-finishers, but I think the way things are at the moment they will stay. Not 100% sure though

is this about how challenging/difficult duels are or about how fun it is to play against those classes?

Hi guys.

Many MMOs have systems that mitigate general damage-output in pvp-zones to create a balanced environment in both PvP and PvE without the need to change spell-scaling individually for both parts of the game. This ensures that players with approximately the same stats in PvP and PvE don’t get oneshotted in PvP while they can still do loads of damage in PvE. There are several ways to implement something like that into the game:

• You could add a new stat that decreases incoming damage from players (could also be used in WvW) just like agony-resistance. The amount of resistance could vary depending on which amulet/gear you choose.
• You could implement a buff that is automatically applied to players when entering PvP-zones and reduces overall incoming damage by a certain percentage (to balance this you’d also have to decrease healing in addition so players can still be killed)
• lower base-stats on PvP-Gear (I like this one least because we already have poor stat-variety with the existing amulets) and healing (from #6-spells) would become overpowered

My idea behind such a change is to tone down the high speed of the game, maybe promote more coordinated teamplay and make good focus and timed CCs necessary to effectively down enemies. So overall good play may be rewarded more.
What’s your opinion?

I still don’t get why everyone is complaining about Diamond Skin. First there are no eles out there, second the trait is utterly useless 90% of the time and it’s in a traitline with useless condition-damage, hence no ele will ever put 30P in earth for it.

anyways, here is my list:
Good:

• General aproach to fix elementalist by boosting it’s defense and increasing build-diversity by making them less reliant on water and arcana
• Dishonor
• Reward-Changes, though our glory is still worthless if we have no gold
• communication with players, before the patch was released and more importantly actually balancing stuff based on feedback

Bad:

• Elementalist still not viable, patch-changes didn’t do much and your intention to lower the need for water and arcana backfired when you raised tiers of certain traits. Now many builds have to put even more points in water and arcana. As long as you don’t change other things like base-HP to lower the need for defensive traits and stats from water and arcana we’ll always have to invest points in those trait-lines.
• Even though you partly listened to community-feedback you actually didn’t implement a single idea from players and just reverted some balancing-changes that seemed too unfair. There are tons of good ideas out there and it seems you don’t even consider implementing them (maybe just like this thread )
• New heals are mostly useless for PvP. I don’t see them often and some are obviously underpowerd compared to existing heals (ele-heal for example never heals the same amount as the glyph does (it can potentially, but you’ll never hit 5 targets, especially with the small range and blocks, dodges, etc.)
• Diamond Skin – It’s a poorly designed trait. Totally overpowered if it actually worked (with lower threshhold or something), but as it is now it’s just useless. The general idea of complete immunities is something that you should never even consider in a pvp-environment. But as it is now, it’s just another weak grandmaster-trait.
• Actually no shift in the current meta: still petting-zoos, condi-spam and hammer/rifle-warriors everywhere. But at least we see more mesmers now.

Missing:

• No efforts to reduce the huge amount of spam in PvP. (Not only conditions, but also dodges and certain skills)
• changes that actually make elementalist viable (boost base-stats!)
• nothing that prevents 4v5 games, no option to report afkers or poeple that leave
• Skyhammer still in solo-Q. Why don’t you even respond to our feedback about the map. It’s ridiculously unbalanced in every aspect. Raid on capricorn is unbalanced too with the underwater-fights and therefore it’s not in solo-Q – so why is skyhammer still in the rotation?
• warrior healing-signet nerf: Like many said before passive traits are boring and often overpowered. I think the way the ele-signet works is perfectly balanced fore example. You actually have to make the heals procc by casting spells so you can’t just stand there and facetank incoming damage.
• no punishments for skyhammer-farmers
• condition-redesign; make them more consistent but less bursty
• still many classes/builds that have low risk/high reward and on the contrary many that have high risk/low reward

and I’d love to see feedback to this list I posted in another thread:

some general thoughts:

• tone down auto-attacks, maybe boost other spells but at the same time increase their CD -> would promote more intelligent use of spells instead of spamming everything you have (I think elementalist has the best balance in terms of weapon-spells) and well-timed dodges would be more important
• tone down overall damage and the power of #6 heals -> would slow down the fast pace of the game a bit
• increase effectiveness of weapon-spells that heal (better scaling with healing-power)-> would boost support-builds/classes and make them important for competetive play
• fine-tune base-stats of every class based on their current performance; balancing the game this way is simple but effective (instead of constantly creating overpowered traits that promote power-creep)
• restrict boons to certain classes -> so every class has a unique boon to share and class-diversity would gain importance in groups
• give strong defensive cooldowns (like invulnerability) higher CDs (in addition to above changes)

(actually the whole thread is full of good ideas, maybe you can check it out: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Arken-s-post-about-the-state-of-pvp/page/2#post3402841)

not a single word on ele ^^

• remove skyhammer or at least remove glass and weaken hammer?
• what do you think of the current state of eles?
• new game-modes?
• report-system f or afkers, 4/5?

Short Question: Is it better to open your reward(-chests) from sPvP and tPvP or keep them until they change rewards next year?

amiavamp.9785:

how to beat Diamond Skin Elementalist via autoattacking while eating a sandwich

Marcos.3690:

Did you find anything new after the last balance patch?

nope. wrong forum btw

just spec 10/0/0/0/0 and go die in the middle of the enemy team … you will do more dps than you could ever do alive in PvP ^^

finally I’ve found a new viable specc

Wintel.4873:

Ele’s are absolutely godawful for Skyhammer because they have 1 source of stability (90 sec cooldown) and 1 knockback (40 sec cooldown)….that’s it. The capture points are small, the map is small, it’s so easy to blow them up or knock them off. Even more kill fodder than usual.

kittening this, as if playing ele wouldn’t be difficult enough we’re even forced to play on this stupid map … I think I have like 90% loose-rate on this map (overall 60% wins in sPvP).

Tarkan.5609:

Gorni.1764:

I already tested several new builds in hotjoin and solo-Q and everytime I return to the D/D x/x/x/30/30 build. New traits (Burning Fire and Diamond Skin) appear to be useless. So our old standard-build is still the most effective build out there I think. It can be used for both offense and defense just by switching runes and amulett.
Unless you play well coordinated tPvP where your team carries you, you can’t really run anything else due to the lack of defense

i usually run 0/15/0/25/30 – what trait do you use in 30 water? because i found that mostly viable for aura share

As bunker I trait 10 in earth for the earth armor and 30P water for the condition-remove on regen. As zerker I’d rather play 0/20/0/20/30 (instead of 25P in water) – I think CD-reduction on air-traits is extremely good on D/D because of the lower CD from our escape-tool RTL and CCs (Shocking-Aura and Updraft) – these spells are the most important on dagger to keep you alive (in addition to the weakness from dagger-2 – but this one doesn’t need the CD-reduction because of the low standard-CD). 25P in water isn’t really worth it anymore since the nerf. Same goes for Aura-Share: since Air-I has been fixed it’s a rather weak trait and this also makes aura-share weaker.
Aura-share would make sense with Tempest Defense (30P Air), I already tried that but the build has so many flaws – it’s barely playable and doesn’t offer much, even in hotjoin. Overall Tempest Defense is still a bad trait because the procc rarely comes when you need it (CC from downed-state, fears, ranged-CCs, etc.) – the only thing it’s good against is CC-warriors but these have enough stability to ignore it and you’re CC’ed too when the aura proccs so you can’t make use of it. The damage-gain from the trait is also laughable – only works with Aura-Stun (which you activate when you have to play defensively) and Earthquake (which has a kitten CD). Very bad design here …

some general thoughts:

• tone down auto-attacks, maybe boost other spells but at the same time increase their CD → would promote more intelligent use of spells instead of spamming everything you have (I think elementalist has the best balance in terms of weapon-spells) and well-timed dodges would be more important
• tone down overall damage and the power of #6 heals → would slow down the fast pace of the game a bit
• increase effectiveness of weapon-spells that heal (better scaling with healing-power)→ would boost support-builds/classes and make them important for competetive play
• fine-tune base-stats of every class based on their current performance; balancing the game this way is simple but effective (instead of constantly creating overpowered traits that promote power-creep)
• restrict boons to certain classes → so every class has a unique boon to share and class-diversity would gain importance in groups
• give strong defensive cooldowns (like invulnerability) higher CDs (in addition to above changes)

I already tested several new builds in hotjoin and solo-Q and everytime I return to the D/D x/x/x/30/30 build. New traits (Burning Fire and Diamond Skin) appear to be useless. So our old standard-build is still the most effective build out there I think. It can be used for both offense and defense just by switching runes and amulett.
Unless you play well coordinated tPvP where your team carries you, you can’t really run anything else due to the lack of defense

Razor.6392:

So many people think that eles are apparently viable lol. Probably fotm build mains not wanting to deal with the ele meta again, kinda sad.

Eles are not viable at all. Every other role outclasses them.

Build diversity is horrible, survivability is bad, base stats are horrible, damage is decent, condition removal is average.

Why not just play a warrior?

this

FrownyClown.8402:

i think im done with tpvp. literally every time my team loses i’m getting blamed for it lol.

yeah, I’m getting flamed for joining solo-Q with my ele. Can provide screens if you don’t belive me.

fun: yes
effective: barely

Obviously the reason behind this change is to nerf instagib-eles … Did you seriously expect a patch without ele-nerfs?

I told ya that it will be useless … see how all diamond-skin-flame-topcis already vanished from the forums? There are so few elementalists out there that it wouldn’t matter anyway.

You may hold out a bit longer at the start of the fight against necros and engis but as soon as you drop below 90% you’ll melt as quickly as before and even 1v1 it’s hard to get back to 90% HP. In teamfights nobody will even notice that you specced diamond skin.

This “major balance-patch” has changed absolutely nothing. Still hambow-warriors, condi-spam-necros, spirit-rangers and condi-engi-bunkers all over the place.

Wouldn’t give up renewing stamina in PvP for weak spot. Eles already lack defense so perma-vigar is way more usefull as 2-3% more damage.

Masochism

ens.9854:

Xillllix.3485:

Cleansing fire does nothing unless you have the cantrip equipped, then it uses it for you. The reason why someone would want this is beyond my understanding.

That isn’t right I don’t think? The trait has a separate cooldown and has nothing to do with the utility. You probably didn’t notice because it is such a garbage trait and activates at often silly/useless times then goes on cooldown.

Edit:^or it’s bugged, haven’t tested

haven’t tested it either but I seriously can’t think that it’s intended to work as described by Xillllix

cursE.1794:

Cleansing fire does nothing unless you have the cantrip equipped, then it uses it for you. The reason why someone would want this is beyond my understanding.

At some point, you start asking yourself if Anet is making fun of elementalist players. Why the kitten would you use such a trait?

it’s bugged, obviously

Ele-Bunker still works. It has some weaknesses but tanking one player is no problem in most cases. You can even last a bit against 2 players as long as they’re not both 100% GC or spirit-rangers ^^
Guards and Engis are still better though, so if you aren’t really dedicated to elementalist I’d choose one of those.

bumping because Arcane Wave is the same now …

CETheLucid.3964:

Same deal with Glyph of Renewal. It is an issue. They either need to work like they used to work but only while underwater, or these skills shouldn’t be useable underwater at all.

I complained about that since the glyph was changed, but Anet doesn’t really care. Those spells are completely useless now underwater.

Nina.4317:

Yeah before u kill them now you qq

it was exactly the same before people started playing cantrip-bunker. Eles were freeloot but most players switched to 0-10-0-30-30 and the class suddenly was competetive. People cried because no free bags anymore → ele nerfed … and the cycle continues

I thought there would be stuff additional to the temporary patchnotes? Only thing I see is FGS fix. This one is not bad though.

Eles won’t see much more play just because of diamond skin. So there’s basically nothing to be afraid of even if the trait turns out to be OP.

Sizer.5632:

If you have 4-5 people within 240 feet of you I doubt you will live long enough to get a 3/4s cast off unless youre a really heavy bunker spec, so maybe some people will find it useful but not many.

exactly this. But, like said, as a bunker you don’t need the damage of the skill – so why would I choose the new heal over a spell that heals more without any risk and even grants boons (glyph) or cures conditions (ER)?

When I take a look at the mesmer heal I would expect the ele heal to be special too. As it is now it’s just inferior to all other heals we have (maybe except the nerfed signet-heal) and nobody will use it – because, like said, the damage is too low to pick it for the bonus-damage, and the heal is lower than other heals so why should I pick a skill that heals less? The blast-finisher is only good with staff – but that alone doesn’t make staff more viable in PvP.

As long as we have condi-spam all over the place ER will be obligatory anyways in PvP.
The new heal might have a niche against pet-classes and for staff-users but that’s it. For GC-speccs ER or glyph are better. I also think that it’s kind of a design-flaw to add damage to a heal-spell that benefits from many enemys standing around you. When playing GC you should avoid standing in the middle of a bunsh of enemies and as a bunker you don’t need the damage – so in both scenarios the spell is sorta misplaced.
They should either boost the damage or remove the damage and increase the heal (while keeping the blast finisher) to make it more interesting … then I might consider using it.

I don’t think that fresh air is meant to be a trait for PvE since it adds some nice burst but not really that much sustained damage. Though the dagger autohit in air isn’t that bad it’s still weak compared to other classes/spells. Overall I’d say that scepter and dagger mainhand damage is quite the same (considering might-stacking) but if you really want to use fresh air I’d go for dagger. Like said the air-autohit is quite good and without points in arcana (I assume – else fresh air wouldn’t really make sense) you’ll sit a lot in air doing autoattacks. But you can also adjust your rotation so that you ’ll always be in air last before other attunements/your “rota” get ready so fresh air would be mostly redundant.

btw: in my opinion fokus is horrible in PvE

Dirame.8521:

If you can explain why I couldn’t seen when people were out of Mana in GW1 then you will find the reason why I don’t want to see the enemy’s endurance bar.

I never really played GW1 but as far as I know it was a completely different game. Anet just took the name (that is certainly misleading because guilds a fairly unimportant in GW2 btw.) … so I don’t really get why people keep comparing GW1 to GW2.

Beside that (or because of that) I don’t really get your point here.

And at all poeple here complaining about the game beeing “dumbed down” or something: PvP in GW2 couldn’t be anymore dumb as it is now. Most of the people talking here just reroll FOTM-classes and think they’re skilled.

Jackums.3496:

And adding an enemy endurance bar will just make GW2 PvP even more simple than it already is. “Watch the bar. Mash your burst when it’s low. Win.”

maybe people would think twice then before spamming dodges …

Jackums.3496:

Having to set up a burst and force your opponent to burn up their evades before initiating it makes for far more interesting gameplay than having a visual cue that tells you you’re free to faceroll away.

you still would have to force your opponent to dodge before you burst. Only difference would be that you know for sure when he’s out of dodges.

It may be my opinion only: but in competetive PvP randomness has no place.

alemfi.5107:

Sensotix.4106:

no no no no
this would make counting dodges when trying to spike a necro etc completely useless and completely destroy the “skill” in this game
when it comes to thieves there are other ways to spike him for example daze/stun him when he is attacking with larcenous strike
please don’t add an endurance bar there

this.

I completely disagree with you. It wouldn’t destroy the game – it would remove some of the insane randomness. Like said before it’s impossible to track endurance of an enemy because of vigor, sigill and some traits. Of course you can count dodges and guess but for example as an elementalist with extremely high burst-CDs it’s essential to know exactly when the enemy can’t dodge.
Bars showing opponents’ resources (also thief initiative, warrior adrenaline and life-force) are an integral part of most MMOs so you can skillfully time your spells – as it is now that’s impossible. You have to guess when the enemy has no endurance, you have to guess when he casts a (specific) spell (asura trolol) and therefore you have to guess when to dodge yourself. Since you never really know when the enemy can dodge or not it’s best to just spam your spells permanently anyways. That’s the most effective playstyle in most scenarios due to low CDs and because there’s no real resource for spells like mana so people don’t get punished for spamming … and you call that skill?
Skill would come from knowing what spells the enemy has, from knowing their approximate CDs, knowing which ones you have to dodge and by having a defensive CD ready when the spell is actually being cast (indicated by a castbar).

I know people won’t really agree with me, but if such bars would have been implemented since release of the game I don’t think that anyone would complain about it – because it’s a perfectly normal thing to have in an MMO.

bumping for interest

Why is everyone complaining about diamond skin? It will go live anyways and we will see if it’s going to be OP or not usefull at all. But there’s no point in theorizing about it now. Until we can test it and see how it works all discussion is a waste of time.

Downed state itself is a terrible mechanic in PvP. Even good players can rarely win a 2v1 or at least kill one enemy (not only down him). There’s also the problem that in group fights every single player is rezzed from downed state if one single enemy gets killed which turns the tide in every group-fight. Another problem is that people won’t finish you near guarded points when you don’t have an effective self-rezz and there are no allys nearby that could rezz you; so it will take ages before you can respawn.

On the topic itself: I agree that stealth should be removed when you enter downed-state. It’s annoying when you don’t know if the enemy is downed or not. In this context Shadow Refuge seems to be the only problem though.

@mist-form: Since the nerf the only real use for this spell is actually finishing and rezzing downed players. Besides that I’d never pick that spell. I don’t even take it for bunkering because it locks you out of your spells and has a high CD. Using a 75s CD for finishing an enemy seems fine to me. Stability practically does the same … do you want’ to remove stability because you can easily finish people with it? Many classes have far more acces to stability than an ele can use mist-form.

this thread is usELEss

I’m actually not sure either if I should stay close at start or go mid as a bunker. I’m often flamed for just staying close (though we’d have lost it several times if I wouldn’t have defended it – people don’t see this of course and start raging about me doing nothing constructive) and on the contrary I’m flamed if I join mid and we loose close …
So as for me I state at the beginning of the game that I’ll bunker close and poeple shall tell me if they need me elsewhere or when it’s safe to leave close (in situations where we know where all enemies (with good mobility) are). I’m also always leaving close when I see that we’re maybe loosing midfight. Close should be safe because your dead team-mates can defend it when they’re respawning while you’re engaged in mid.

Anyways when you stay close you secure a good amount of points over the whole game. Your 4 mates should be able to get the rest by winning team-fights in mid or decapping far when it’s undefended.

Furako.4829:

so auramances just sit in between, lacking something “exclusive” who make them unique.

you don’t give just boons, you share the auras themselfes which can be quite effective when you time it well (CC or damage-reduction+chill). This won’t be noticeable in larger groups though .

Sylvaris simply have the best cultural armor

FrownyClown.8402:

oZii.2864:

The Game Slayer.7632:

You cant throw up random numbers in the air and expect them to stick. Thats like saying a war and his 100% crit dmg will hit me for 20k with 100blades, so obviously, wars are better at anything damage wise since they can 1shot people with hundred blades.

But, wow man, im really not gonna argue with ya. lol.

What lol? You just compared direct damage with condition damage?

News Flash:

Bleeds, Burning, Confusion, Poison do the same damage no mater the class you play if you both have the same condition damage.

Ease of application is what makes engineers and necros better than everyone else at condition pressure.

I’m fine with that. Ele has strengths in other areas they don’t.

running away and dying?

Hmm … I didn’t play tournaments for just one day and dropped 70 ranks down (~230→300). This seems somehow weird.

I don’t really get why commander should be bound to certain classes or builds. Only thing you need is tactical understanding. Since you’re running around in a zerg a single person/specc won’t make that much difference. I wouldn’t run GC though because it’s bad when the commander is always dead/downed first and you’re often at the front, leading your zerg and therefore the first to engage a fight.