Guild Wars 2

all amulets (in pvp) and armor (in pve) will get additional stats, they stated this. the only question is how many and which ones.

with engi and chronomancer both getting f5 skills, looks like a trend, and warrior (and probably necro) getting an f2 skill as seen in the very first PoI stream i assume that most likely every class will get an additional F-skill.

would be too close to soothing ice though and even if every aura lasted only 1s it would keep triggering elemental shielding giving you perm protection which would result in a nerf anyway.

maybe, but the way the trait is now perfectly fits the playstyle of d/d, you will get hit and you expect to get hit – unlike on glassy builds – and by getting hit you gain something.

how about we just buff the durations of the boons to useful levels…?

base 4s for all the boons and deal.

that way it will be 50% uptime (with boon duration) and not too bad imo.

i would even agree on switching fury with swiftness for air so that it helps with in-combat mobility.

Kaleban.9834:

William Bradley Knight.2609:

A 25s cooldown, traitable to 20s via Aeromancer’s Alacrity, would seem very reasonable. Might ANet actually consider that?

Doubtful, all the new Revenants (former Warrios) might whine too much about how Eles get away from all their shiny skills.

Likely, ANet will leave Eles old skills as is. After all, we keep playing them despite the issues, so what’s ANet’s incentive to fix them?

why do you think warriors will play revenant in the future. doesn’t play like a warrior at all lol. axe 4 is a very solid gap closer so rtl wouldn’t hurt them much.

tbh i’m not a big fan of the name, the name is ok but it doesn’t make me wanna stand up and scream.

what i’d like to have is a dps high mobility duelist specialisation with leaps and blocks, sword/dagger for example.

following the trend that we’ve seen so far ele will most likely get an f5 attunement too.
as for utility skills, i want enchantments – similar to what the dervish had – skills that have an effect during and at the end of their use.

what do you mean with chill. warrior’s sprint was always taken on hambow so nothing changes there, you use sword 2 and that’s where the kiting/mobility comes from.

stance hambow no, it gets beaten by all other builds

shout hambow maybe, the mobility is bad and that’s a big problem

sorry to say this but giving ele skills new conditions won’t work. every profession has its main conditions that fit the theme and as long as our elite specialisation won’t be something like a butcher i can’t see (and i don’t agree with) ele getting torment or poison.

they pretty much killed the stance hambow by putting burst mastery vs merciless hammer in the gm slot. ofc you can still play it, but with 20% less damage or a bad burst skills uptime.

20s cd, no on hit stuff. everybody will be happy.

the problem with dragons tooth is that it sucks against everything because you need to target it.

thief in stealth? np can’t use dragon’s tooth
stack might? np cast it 900 range away from you, run there, place fire field
cleave a downed player? np target first to use the skill
moving target? don’t even bother casting it

keep phoenix as it is, that’s the counter when some classes try to melee you. gotta punish them somehow.

atm it’s:

evasive arcana dodge heal + elemental attunement boons = support

after the update it will be

evasive arcana dodge heal +25% heal = support
or
elemental attunement boons +25% heal = support

see the problem? 25% of 1,5k dodge heal is 375. i’d rather keep how it is now because 25% outgoing heal is not gonna make or break me but evasive vs attunement will.

improvement of scepter skills and traits for berserk ele

elementalist:

flame strike (scepter auto: fire):
casting time reduced from 1.25s to 0.75s, burning duration reduced from 2s to 1.5s.

dragon’s tooth (scepter #2: fire):
this skill is a ground target skill now.

shatterstone (scepter #2: water):
applys 1s second of chill per pulse (3 pulses) in the area. cooldown increased to 10s from 2s.

lightning strike (scepter #2: air):
the skill will stay instacast but will get a 0,25s wind up time before it hits the target, producing black clouds around the target.

stone shards (scepter auto attack: earth):
casting time reduced from 1.5s to 0.75s, bleeding duration reduced from 6s to 3s.

obsidian flesh (focus #5: earth):
cooldown reduced to 45 from 50s.

arcane shield:
cooldown reduced from 75s to 60s.

mist form:
cooldown reduced from 75s to 65s.

glyph of elemental harmony:
cooldown reduced from 25s to 20s, casting time reduced from 1.25s to 1s.
protection duration increased from 3s to 6s.

cantrip mastery: water III
(currently cd reduction of cantrips) new: additionally increases the range of lightning flash from 900 to 1200.

fresh air: air XII
when this trait activates, black clouds will be generated around the player to indicate that the air attunement is off cooldown now.

feel free to discuss

so you’re giving up the best grandmaster trait in water for a worse version of elemental attunement.. makes sense..

you mean at the start of the game and for the last 6 months, the rest of the time ele was dead in pvp…

just because people run staff eles in esl doesn’t mean that it’s viable… there where all kind of things in esl, like static discharge engis for example..

idk why you think staff ele is good fro stronghold, there are no points in stronghold, all open field, and generally staff eles suck in open field.

playing d/d also offers more reliable cc, so if you want a side point bunker just keep playing d/d and not staff.

the discussions aren’t really about the meta itself but rather why the changes to ele are the wrong approach.

won’t “hamshout”.. be a thing after the update? adrenaline on shouts will make up for the loss of burst mastery. you won’t have the stances though but even more sustain. 00666 i guess.

staff ele isn’t played now and it won’t really be played afterwards.

ofc you can take multiple supports but why would you take something that is not the best availlable build?

i agree with the defensive for fresh air, just nerfing the damage on air was unnecessary.

some things that i can’t agree with at all:

-dragon’s tooth needs ground casting, so it’s not fine.
-arc lightning is fine because you can channel it out of air and trigger fresh air with it.
-ice shards are fine, they’re actually the 2nd best auto attack
-shatterstone should apply chill with every tick, they already reduced the casting of it.
-while i’m not against the idea of more leaps i feel like it doesn’t fit water trident tbh.
-the problem with hurl is that it puts rock barrier on a 15s cd when you use it.

there is no reason to play a roamer with turrets that don’t move in the first place…
roamers generally have mobility and disengages you know.

Nova Stiker.8396:

At this rate daggers will completely be taken out of the meta and everyone will swap to Fresh Air or Tempest Defense for all the wrong reasons.

It’s clear ArenaNet had NO idea how to balance the Elementalist.

By far the biggest issue is the amount of protection and cleansing we get. Elemental Shielding and Elemental Attunement allow way to much protection, combined with Cleansing Water you got yourself a class that can keep itself clean of conditions AND can take 33% less damage at most instances of fight.

ArenaNet said themselves, you can be great at multiple things, the problem is when the class becomes good at everything.

_

In my opinion, Cleansing Water just needs to go. Which would suck as it pretty much allows me to 1v1 anything but lets face it, better to get rid of Cleansing Water than moving Elemental Attunement and Elemental Shielding to worthless tiers.

Fine. We are a bit easier to be blown up with conditions. Better that than being blown up by everything.

Do not get rid of the elementalist support, ArenaNet, this proposed changes just confounds me :\

_

Oh, and FREAKING FIX CHILL ALREADY GOD kitten .

do you actually know how much armor a celestial d/d has? it’s 2300, so obviously we’re gonna have a good protection uptime. i would rather take a warrior’s health and armor and remove elemental shielding

d/d can do many things but it excels at burst mobility and a mixed support (heal, boons, cleanse) but it’s a bad damage dealer, especially after the nerf, so it’s not “good at everything” but rather “ok at everything” as it’s not the best in any of it.

cleansing water actually lets eles stand up to warriors and engis with their many conditions they can apply. you say you don’t want them to remove cleansing water but you know.. cleansing water is support. you remove conditions from allies… not only from yourself…

i think now it would only be fair to give turrets tiny jetpacks and wheels to follow their master.

Ario.8964:

Here’s a new thing:
Instead of arguing with people who are against shadow’s rejuv, let’s try something different and ask them what they would change on the “OP teef with god mode”.

If you think thief is unbalanced please give your ideas for ways to change thief to balance it so we can work off of that rather than just people arguing “op” or “not op”.

you’re healed for a portion of the damage you recieve in stealth.

this time it does because of the balthazar skins, they’re not in the game yet so they need to update the client.

then tell me which amazing berserk build other than medi guard is able to reliably kill a thief.

there are support builds on thief, wether they’re good or not is a different question.
not every class has a support build, or have you ever seen a support mesmer?

the reason why thief is the strongest zerker is because of:

its active defence, be it stealth or evades
its ability to disengage and to reset a fight
the numerous gapclosers that make a thief unkiteable
the ability to interrupt through stability

no other berserk build is able to do all these things at the same time. there is not a single reason to not take a thief with the current balance.

how about

get 2s of resistance for every earth skill you use that has a cooldown. this would at least make people use churning earth against condi classes lol.

why do you assume that elemental attunement takes less skill than contigency? with EA you have to at least switch attunements, EC is just 100% passive.

why should a thief be able to kill classes with builds that were designed to stay alive to keep points and support allies?

thief is the most op berserk class, pushing almost all of the other berserk builds out of the meta. even without any buffs to thief it would still be the same as it is now, and still they decided to buff thief, imagine that.

if all, thief should have been nerfed.
cooldowns on teleports skills that use initiative, nerf to panic strike.

with the difference that thieves gan go into stealth every 4s and auras have 20-40s cooldowns.

that depends on arenanet as they kinda have to add all those lost stats to all the amulets. if they do it is a different question.

and tbh berserker don’t care about healing power, i prefer a good heal over sor + healing power on berserk ele.

and with a big “interrupt me please” sign.

just because it’s the only “useful” trait in that slot doesn’t mean that it’s a good trait.

if you manage your rotation well and know how to go out and in of different rotations it’s not hard giving your allies what they need in the right moment…

and you don’t use any mightstack combos anymore other than the blast from water, battle runes and 20 might stacks are a thing from the past. it’s the same with people insta dodging when they go into water.. wasting a dodge when they could have dodged an actual damaging skill because you won’t stay in water for 10s anyway.

you’re overreacting…. healing power will get nerfed by 10%, so sor will still heal at least around 250/s. if they don’t add 300 healing power to the amulet they will still add more than 100 toughness so that will balance it out aswell.

the problem with sor is more that it sucks for a) short fights, b) slow weapons.

something like withdraw would be appreciated.

glyph of elemental harmony would need a cooldown and casting time reduction. the heal itself sucks so i’d rather have something else; tempest please.

how about -75% (number may vary) condi duration when not moving.

guess what, there are eles around that use their boons in the right moment, just because you don’t doesn’t justify the nerf.

the earth traits and the loss of the aoe boons for your team make ele a hardtank, exactly what is not needed.

let me tell you a story from an ex thief player. when gw2 was released i picked a thief as my main class with double daggers. i played WvW back then and not PvP because of random reasons.

i played a d/d berserk/valk/soldier build with 200% crit damage and 30% crit chance or so with mug, shadow rev and the 100% crit in stealth trait.

it wasn’t a full berserk build so my backstabs hit for 4-6k, that’s the amount that d/p panic strike thieves hit now.
so without executioner, panic strike (which sucked back then), sleight of hand and double basilisk venom i won 99% of my 1v1s. i won most of my 1v2s, many 1v3s and i even managed to win a 1v6. ofc WvW players are often mechanically not as good as the higher level pvp players.

you don’t have to camp stealth if you play with SA, you play normally, you go in stealth and you trigger the regen and hp/s the same way as you trigger your condi cleanse right now. it’s for free, you’re not giving up anything for it.
if you indeed get low you go in stealth and disengage, nothing changes.

and where are you taking the “other classes are op now too” from?
necro – no buff
engi – thief is not intended to kill engi in a 1v1
ele – thief not intended to kill a d/d in a 1v1
warrior – thief not intended to kill a shoutbow in a 1v1
mesmer – dies to thief anyway
guardian – will die to thief now because of the additional sustain from sa
ranger – thief won’t kill condi rangers. power rangers is hard to tell, idk how their changes will change the playstyle.

basically what will suffer from these changes are the berserk classes, making other things than thief less viable and destroying dps diversity even more.

nobody will stunbreak shocking aura, especially because it triggers when you are stunned.

the current fresh air spec is 06044 and not 66002. even though 66 brings more power, but as i have said multiple times, fresh air doesn’t need more power (sadly it got nerfed for no reason…) but more ways to defend itself. if you want raw power you can play a s/d lightning rod build, you can oneshot people but your survivability is nonexistent.

furthermore will you get the power stats you currently gain from the fire line without having to go into it after the changes.

you can compare fresh air to the meta dps builds: medi guard, thief, celestial engi (and mesmer).

all of them can survive on their own and don’t need babysitting (except mesmer if there is an enemy thief). that’s the reason why they are meta, they are strong on their own.
fresh air on the other hand needs babysitting against thieves and other specs. if the changes can get rid of this, fresh air will be a lot more viable.

oh and there are no top players actively playing fresh air for their teams, at least not in EU.

i would never take this even if it was 20% damage, 10% of an ele’s health are an auto attack of any class

Iris Ng.9845:

Stone Heart will be a big issue for any classes relying on crit and passive procs.

FRE (Fire-Air-Earth) will have more sustain to counter thief, mesmer, power ranger. FRW will have more damage and/or sustain to counter condi heavy and cele classes. Tempest defense and Blinding Ash are so good against CC, on top of multiple access to burning. If anything, abusing the damage modifier of Tempest Defense to set up a Gale -> Dragon Tooth -> Phoenix -> Swarp to Water -> Arcane/Lightning Flash -> Swap to Air, hit the three instant cast will net you some serious damage.

If Bolt to the Heart and Air Training are to be still the same, S/x Fresh Air ele will be too OP in sPvP.

fire line is not good enough to take and without water you will be weak against conditions so i would never take fire over water.

as for gale and combo.. believe me.. every decent player will stunbreak out of your gale as soon as you cast it and you can’t bait stunbreaks because shatter stone is just a daze. your best choice is to force 2 dodges and burst then.

my bad then.
so healing surge will be the shout heal which heals for 10k + 2k, resulting in 513hp/s but is not that easy to use and pretty bad out of combat.

mending would have definitely been better^^

i deleted that part now out of my first post because i’m not sure if warriors will actually take that heal now.

you always have to see how much effort it would take to create class specific falling animations, anet is usually short on devs and i don’t think they would want to use their time for that.

you get the knockdown because of.. well… physics i guess, if you jump down from a high place you won’t be able to land on your feet in reality.

the only problem with merging falling damage traits with pve masteries or wvw masteries is how you’re able to use them when you’re in pve or when you go to wvw, you would kinda have to unlock them twice…

best thing would just be to make them baseline.

just wanted to throw this in here but i always felt like axe 1&2 should be 900 range baseline.. or at least axe mastery should make it 900.
most likely this has also been suggested countless times but one more time can’t hurt i guess.

one with air was always the same way – superspeed when attuning to air. nobody took it because 1s was not useful enough so what they did with it now is pretty good.

and no, a d/f berserk ele will never take out a d/d ele that knows how to play, he will simply outsustain and kill him. you will just eat all the damage because it is a berserker spec with 15k hp and 1800 armor in melee range.

i think it’s possible that s/f fresh air ele will become kind of a.. bruiser dps class.. possibly outsustaining other dps classes while not being as bursty. can’t really say as i’d have to test it first.. if it is indeed the case it could be viable for small scale even fights.

problem is, what fresh air needed was damage and survivability, not either or.

merciless hammer is now a grandmaster trait with burst mastery which effectively kills the build by lowering the damage you get from stuns by 20% because you need burst mastery to keep the might up.

a buffed hambow? seems like you missed that they actually killed the already underused build.

people will take 1-2 shoutbows and 3-4 dps (not necessarily berserker).

the problem with moving elemental attunement to GM and making us pick either attune or evasive is a huge nerf to the ele’s support role. it’s even possible that d/d is not viable anymore because of this when a shoutbow can execute the job better. i talked about that in my thread and when d/d becomes a hardtank people will complain even more, right now you can kill d/d eles, will you be able to kill them when they get damage reduction and stone heart?