Guild Wars 2

Mike how do you expect people to buy expansion 2 if expansion 1 was such a disappointment for many players? you are misusing our trust. you sold us an expansion that was way too expensive for its content and now you’re not even delivering what you promised?

give moa a skill that cleanses all conditions and reduce the duration by 2s.. or make the f5 not work with elites anymore.

gw2 will never become an esport with the lack of responsiveness of arenanet. they balance the wrong stuff, they often don’t address major problems or when it’s already too late and there isn’t even a build saving option in this game even though pvp players have been asking for it since release… all they’re doing is wasting money… look how many players still care about the “pro scene” and look how many left to play better games.
gw2 doesn’t even have team sponsors.. that’s how much the esports scene cares about guild wars.

so you have a 37% winrate in ranked, a crap build and you still expect to rise in divisions?

wat

matchmaking is fine, now change it so that you can lose divisions from sapphire-legendary and tiers from amber-legendary, basically that amber is the only division you can’t drop back into. maybe add placement matches too for better season starts.

another option would be to reset mmr at the start of a season.

i feel like year 2 should give us a legendary gem that we can put into our amulets, to honor our long forgotten feature that fell pray to lets-trivialize-pvp.

changeable stats of course and an effect (like those queen bee bla and chak muh or whatever they’re called) that lets crying llamas whirl around you.

marauder version of viper, so viper + vitality

idk why they’re even continuing this. it’s basically money thrown out of the window. the twitch numbers are way too low and in no way are they selling enough copies because of the pro league.. i also can’t imagine that the sponsors pay enough to cover all the costs for a whole season.

what gw2 needs is a different business model for pvp. sell elite specs like mobas sell heroes (but make sure they are perfectly balanced.. or it will result in p2w.. and stop releasing them with expansions. release like 1 a month and you will get 9 in a year too.) and create pvp skins that can be bought in the gem store: finishers with your favourite team’s logo, a baseball cap with your team’s logo, whatever, be creative.

if you like to play rock paper scissor, baiting stunbreaks and 100-0 players while stunning them for 6 seconds then well.. yeah.. blade and soul in a nutshell.

i don’t like how it feels to fight on points. on all other maps you can make use of some tricks, kiting on some fences or rocks etc, but here it doesn’t work. you have the jump pads but most of the time they don’t give you anything.

another thing that really bugs me is how the points feel… they’re small and “not open” but have those annoying pillars around them that make the point feel “constricting”. that goes for all 3 points on skyhammer.

people complained during the beta, people complain now, people will complain in the future. warhorn was already destined to fail because 1. they gave us a warhorn, one of the most unspectacular weapons while most of the community asked for a fast high dps melee range weapon like sword and 2. because it has to compete with 2 strongest and most versatile offhand weapons in the game.

i think there is almost no chance for warhorn to ever compete with dagger or focus. you either have to overtune its skills in such a way that you’re almost forced to take it, or redesign its skills in a way that it doesn’t compete with dagger and focus anymore.

warhorn was supposed to be the melee range support bruiser weapon.. and yet you have strange skills on it that make no sense, like lightning orb. other skills that kinda are support skills just feel weak. i dare to say water is the only real good attunement on warhorn, earth being okayish and fire and air obsolete sadly.

another flaw is that most of your support comes from shouts and auras so warhorn isn’t really needed and it’s way better to pick an offhand that keeps you alive, lets you safestomp with an invul and block projectiles aoe. after all, a dead support doesn’t support anymore.

Alekt.5803:

Jekkt.6045:

Alekt.5803:

Jekkt.6045:

i would say dagger is in general a lot stronger than focus. there is literally not a single bad skill on it. churning earth might not be the best skill but after its buff it is at least acceptable.

by function focus is currently more viable because it makes you survive longer and you don’t need to be a fast bruiser anymore. on focus you either have the really strong ones like obsidian, or the weak ones like freezing gust while on dagger all of them are equally impactful.

Sure. There are weak spells with extremely strong ones. Just look at how loaded Magnetic Wave is. (Great damage, low cooldown, instant cast, staff-quality AoE radius, long duration cripple, reflection without clear visual that is 1 sec less than aura, clear 3 condition, blast finisher).

Then, look at Magnetic Aura from staff. (Instant, aura, reflect for 4 seconds, longer cooldown)

One word. Fairness.

warhorn earth 4, sand squall
Apply protection to you and your allies, then increase the duration of all boons currently existing on you and your allies. Gain magnetic aura.

i find it funny that warhorn gets skills like that while other, older weaponsets just have normal auras on the same cooldown (30s, magnetic aura on staff, even though on staff the aura lasts 1s longer according to wiki).
and then in the end warhorn is still last in the food chain mostly because imo it doesn’t synergize as well as the other weapons.

It has a long cast time for an aura as reactive as Magnetic Aura. Warhorn does not have invulnerability or reliable peel options. Even the Cyclone got its unblockable removed.

well so there’s potential for a buff, reduce sand squall casting time to 1/4s. but what i meant was that they transitioned from simple auras to more “complex” effects. as you say, warhorn peel is meh and it neither offers disengages like dagger nor invulnerability. cyclone was sadly never unblockable, just a wrong tooltip.

Alekt.5803:

Jekkt.6045:

i would say dagger is in general a lot stronger than focus. there is literally not a single bad skill on it. churning earth might not be the best skill but after its buff it is at least acceptable.

by function focus is currently more viable because it makes you survive longer and you don’t need to be a fast bruiser anymore. on focus you either have the really strong ones like obsidian, or the weak ones like freezing gust while on dagger all of them are equally impactful.

Sure. There are weak spells with extremely strong ones. Just look at how loaded Magnetic Wave is. (Great damage, low cooldown, instant cast, staff-quality AoE radius, long duration cripple, reflection without clear visual that is 1 sec less than aura, clear 3 condition, blast finisher).

Then, look at Magnetic Aura from staff. (Instant, aura, reflect for 4 seconds, longer cooldown)

One word. Fairness.

warhorn earth 4, sand squall
Apply protection to you and your allies, then increase the duration of all boons currently existing on you and your allies. Gain magnetic aura.

i find it funny that warhorn gets skills like that while other, older weaponsets just have normal auras on the same cooldown (30s, magnetic aura on staff, even though on staff the aura lasts 1s longer according to wiki).
and then in the end warhorn is still last in the food chain mostly because imo it doesn’t synergize as well as the other weapons.

i would say dagger is in general a lot stronger than focus. there is literally not a single bad skill on it. churning earth might not be the best skill but after its buff it is at least acceptable.

by function focus is currently more viable because it makes you survive longer and you don’t need to be a fast bruiser anymore. on focus you either have the really strong ones like obsidian, or the weak ones like freezing gust while on dagger all of them are equally impactful.

the reason why i did not include staff is because i rarely play it. i don’t want to suggest stuff for a weapon that i haven’t played much lately because i might not see well enough what staff needs.

for focus, i think if you compare dagger and focus you have the problem that some skills on focus are rather weak or uninspired. i understand that buffing focus kicks warhorn even further out but that’s no reason tbh, it’s even more reason to buff warhorn. again, i don’t play warhorn enough so i won’t suggest buffs for that weapon either.

of course suggestions for staff and warhorn are also welcome in this thread

it’s 1 stack of stability. gl stomping somebody in a 2v2

switch out gale song for unstable conduit. auras will give you more sustain and another source of shocking aura. the stunbreak on gale song is okay but imo inferior. if you mange your overloads well you have enough stunbreaks. if you need to stomp you can cancel cast earth overload for the stability.

rock solid in earth isn’t worth it either. sure, it’s stability, but it’s only 2s which isn’t enough to stomp or res somebody. geomancer’s training is good vs chill which is quite common atm and reduces the cooldown of your knockdown which is good for lightning rod.

amulet, sigils and runes seem okay. the build overall.. idk, there’s a lot of stability in the game so lightning rod isn’t as good anymore as it used to be.

an alternative would be with the fire line instead of air, using a sage’s amulet (for more support) or a mercenary amulet for more damage with renewal/doom (sage) or geomancy/doom (mercenary).

overall it’s surely not the best thing to play on an ele atm, after all cleric shout healer is the most viable build in pvp right now (ik, it’s boring). but if this works for you, why not.

i would like to revitalize this thread. i would like for dps ele to be viable in pvp (afaik it is already very viable in pve) but some skills are too weak and the scepter is outdated and could use some buffs, especially the auto attacks and shatterstone. i tried to give some skills impactful effects instead of just number buffs.

yesterday i looked through my old suggestions and reworked some of them, and i feel like my proposed changes could put dps scepter eles in a quite good spot. i take it that many ele players are unhappy with the current healer role in pvp so an alternative would be appreciated.

feel free to share your ideas or concerns

according to ncsoft, heart of thorns didn’t have the success they expected… so they want to “investigate” what the root of this could be so that the 2nd expansion is able to earn them more money (and is able to make the players more happy).

add a real pvp tutorial, even if you have to ask players in the pro league about what you should put in..

in 99% of my matches i have players that don’t know how to rotate, run into lost fights, run into 1v2 on capped nodes, dont know when to do beasts, don’t know when to do lord, don’t know how to do openings, don’t know buff timers on temple, treb all match and make their team lose 4v5, etc, etc.

and then they complain about matchmaking and how they lose a bazilion matches in a row.

elite specs come with expansions. they are working on a second expansion but there is no release date yet, not even a trailer or an announcement. as for what they will be… hopefully better designed ones than dragon hunter, berserker and tempest.

you will never get a competitive match in queue anyway.. if you wanna have a competitive match then grab a team and scrim or play a tournament.. that’s how it has always been.

the matchmaking is designed to let good players rise and keep the bad ones down. the matchmaking in season 1 on the other hand matched you with players of the same skill already in the first division which allowed low level players to advance equally which is obviously wrong.

while it might be hard for some players, it’s actually working as intended.

that’s a different problem that needs to be addressed aswell.

it would be a good counter that is not that widely accessible on most classes, and helps balancing chill damage a bit more.

it’s 4 seasons, cmon that’s really enough time.

i would like to have kormir as a hero :^)

oh.. and dhuum please

i have 8500 pvp matches and i have a win rate of 80-90%, playing fresh air ele. matchmaking seems to work so far.

it doesn’t need a rework. change it to each projectile that hits the same target deals 20% less damage. 100%, 80% and 60% if you hit one player with 3, 3x 100% if it’s 3 different players.

now we only need a precision strike nerf, a scrapper survivability or damage nerf and then we might get close to a state where all of the 4 pvp classes are “balanced”.

can you also remove the marauder amulet? i honestly feel like pvp would be so much better and joyous to watch if every dps spec had to use a berserker/assassin/viper amulet :^)

ele only gets played because it’s the only playable dedicated support. you can’t play bunker guard because the healing numbers are too low and it dies too fast, and druid’s support is less accessible.
if it was possible to play without a support you wouldn’t see eles in teams anymore, but we saw what happens if you try playing without.

while the date might have been known for a small number of players because they have read and remembered it somewhere before, it is completely wrong to start advertising for such a ‘big’ event 4 days before the finals happen.

there needs to be a reminder in hotm, on the forums, on the website, on twitch, maybe even articles about it on websites like IGN – weeks before, but cmon, how can you be serious about esports if you do something like that?

Travis.3487:

welcome to the world rangers and thieves, and necros all had their time in.

you mean the world where ele was already in when necros and rangers were still dancing around with dhuumfire and spirit builds? and thief was only useless for 1 season, not over 1 year like ele.

ele is dead, face it already. it is bad when it comes to dps builds and it is bad when it comes to support builds.

it might work in wood division but in no way you will survive against competitive teams with 13k hp and 2900 armor / 18k hp and 1800 armor.

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

I am used to these threads from every MMO I play and actually yes I do like it when I hear something from the development now and then. But ANET is not that bad in my opinion, they give us information that is needed. If they where to give us a ‘we are working on it’ many people would complain about how slow ANET are or how they are not keeping their promise as has been showed in the past. I rather play a game where the lead game designer worked on the game rather than he/she was sitting on Twitter answering questions. The devs are working on their game and they have people on all different communities the keep an eye on what people are saying. I have seen many changes to the game that players have asked for but it is not always mine or your wishes.

this might work for casual mmos, but not when you’re trying to force your game to become an esport.

with the lack of motivation for gw2 i went out into the big world, playing other pvp games and while i’m enjoying this and that, i saw something that would benefit guild wars a lot.

there is this one game with a lead game designer that replies on twitter all the time, about new features, and most importantly about balance.

if you tweet him “hey, i feel like this and that is too strong because of x, y : (”
(if it’s true) he will answer “team currently investigating. fixes incoming.”

or you can even tell him simple stuff and you will get an answer like “noted. thanks”

here in guild wars you never know what the devs are doing. you never know what they think or if they even read the forums, and i think this is very unhealthy for the game.
even if the devs read the forums, if players can’t see that devs actually read stuff or know about broken stuff, or work on fixes etc, they will get dissatisfied.

so what should you do? post more stuff on the forums. even if it’s just small stuff. or use your twitter. if one lead game designer can do it, you can too. that’s stuff you have to do if you want to be esports. communication is key, and communication is lacking right now.

druid
scrapper
reaper
daredevil
herald
dragonhunter
chronomancer
berserker
tempest

berserker and tempest can be switched with each other.

druid at the top because it’s the best bruiser atm with ridiculous damage output from pets

scrapper above reaper because scrapper has less flaws than reaper even though reaper can be more devastating

what i predict is written below:

tbh if you want something that fits the name.. all skills while in water attunement become unblockable and deal vulnerability.

no, the 3k hp that guard got from the traitlines were not made baseline

i wouldn’t mind the removal of celestial if they actually fixed the classes that are only viable on celestial.

Lordrosicky.5813:

If a meta doesnt have a bunker guardian in it then it is not healthy.

bunker guard is dead since they removed traitline stats. gl with bunker guard in the 26.jan meta.

keep your bs to yourself, ele was trash can tier for over a year. then it became strong and now it’s back to trash can tier again.

could you either disable elementalist or at least buff dps eles the right way?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Dream-scepter-focus-changes/first#post5921245

Jekkt.6045:

Profession Skills
Elementalist

• Flamestrike
  Cast time reduced from 1.25s to 0.5s. Burning duration reduced from 3s to 2s.

• Dragon’s Tooth
  Time for impact halved.

• Flamewall
  Duration decreased to 5s from 8s. Cooldown increased to 25s from 20s. Destroys projectiles and applies one might for 7s for each destroyed projectile.

• Ice Shards
  Added 4s of vulnerability per ice shard, resulting in a total of 3 stacks per auto attack.

• Shatterstone
  Increased cooldown from 2s to 25s. Removed vulnerability. Increased radius to 240 from 180. Added 1s of chill per pulse and a 1s stun on the final explosion. Increased damage by ~300%. currently crits for ~1500 on light golem.

• Freezing Gust
  Chills now aoe around the target, up to 3 targets.

• Comet
  Decreased cast time to 0.25s from 0.75s.

• Arc Lightning
  Sped up the duration to 2.25s from 3s.

• Lightning Strike
  Added a 0.75s delay before the skill hits its target. Added a visual effect to indicate which target will be hit: a small black cloud will appear over the target. Increased damage by ~250%. currently crits for ~2000 on light golem.

• Stone Shards
  Split up into individual stone shards. Cast time reduced to 0.25s from 1.25s. Base damage increased by ~50%. Bleeding duration reduced to 4s from 6s.

• Rock Barrier
  Increased duration to 60s from 30s.

Imo those are the scepter/focus changes that would put the weaponset into a top spot. of course utilities and traits also need changes.

scepter is just not a condi weapon, even if it can work sometimes.. neither is it a hybrid weapon.

it shares the same problems like d/d thieves which was also supposed to be a hybrid weapon and yet fails completely at it.

i would say an either or is what scepter needs. i’m sure one day we’ll get a condi elite specialisation.

Profession Skills
Elementalist

• Flamestrike – Scepter Fire Auto
  Cast time reduced from 1.25s to 0.5s. Burning duration reduced from 3s to 1,5s.
  Lower casting times for a better synergy with fresh air. overall the casting time of flamestrike was too long. burning duration reduced to keep condi balance.

• Dragon’s Tooth – Scepter Fire 2
  Time for impact halved.
  This skill is too much risk vs reward, while the impact time might have been justified in the past it isn’t anymore today.

• Flamewall – Focus Fire 4
  Duration decreased to 5s from 8s. Cooldown increased to 30s from 20s. Each time you pass flamewall you remove the condition chill. passing through flamewall has an internal cooldown of 1s.
  Compared to ring of fire and wildifre, flamewall is a bit underpowered. giving it the ability to remove chill fits thematically and is something new.

• Ice Shards – Scepter Water 1
  Added 3s of vulnerability per ice shard, resulting in a total of 3 stacks per auto attack.
  Water usually provides vulnerability and with this it improves the damage of a scepter ele. the auto attack speed of ice shards is already fast enough.

• Shatterstone – Scepter Water 2
  Increased cooldown from 2s to 25s. Removed vulnerability. Increased radius to 240 from 180. Added 1s of chill per pulse and a 1s stun on the final explosion. Increased damage so that it crits for around 5k*. (explosion time reverted to the old duration).
  Shatterstone always fellt like a filler skill that doesn’t have any meaningful impact at all. with this change it becomes a good tool for kiting and area denial or burst – for the price of a long cooldown.

• Freezing Gust – Focus Water 4
  Same effect + if the target is already chilled you deal increased damage with this skill, but the 3s chill of freezing gutst are not applied. bonus damage* on the level of lightning strike (scepter air 2).
  Rewarding improvement to ele’s damage at the price of the control effect.

• Comet – Focus Water 5
  Decreased cast time to 0.25s from 0.75s.
  Casting time reduced to make it more reliable for interrupting enemy key skills.

• Arc Lightning
  Sped up the duration to 2.25s from 3s.
  As stated above, general buff for all scepter autos.

• Lightning Strike – Scepter Air 2
  Added a 0.75s delay before the skill hits its target. Added a visual effect to indicate which target will be hit: a small black cloud will appear over the target. Increased damage so that it crits for around 3-3,5k*.
  More risk and more reward. players often complained that this skill has no counterplay. this way the skill gets counterplay but is also more punishing if you don’t evade it.

• Stone Shards – Scepter Earth Auto
  Split up into individual stone shards. Cast time reduced to 0.25s from 1.25s. Base damage increased so that each stone shard crits for around 300-400 damage*. Bleeding duration reduced to 3s from 6s.
  Faster auto to improve fresh air synergy. bleeds reduced to keep condi balance.

• Rock Barrier – Scepter Earth 2
  Increased duration to 60s from 30s.
  Qol improvement.

• Mist Form – Cantrip Utility
  Cooldown reduced to 60s from 75s.
  The cooldown is too long.

• Arcane Shield – Arcane Utility
  Cooldown reduced to 60s from 75s. (same for the arcane trait Final Shielding)
  Same as above, cooldown is too long.

• Glyph Of Elemental Harmony – Glyph Heal
  Added effect: after using this skill, incoming direct damage and condi damage is reduced by 20% for 7 seconds. Casting time decreased to 0.75s from 1.25s.
  The new effect adds something fresh that no other ele heal currently provides and helps against enemy focus.

• Arcane Brilliance – Arcane Heal
  Increased the damage* to match the numbers of Arcane Blast and Wave.
  Increased the healing from 3500 to 5500 and reduced the bonus healing per target hit to 10%.
  In PvP this skill was never used because you rarely hit 5 targets and it didn’t deal enough damage to warrant its usage offensively. the healing amount gets increased to match other healing skills, and the damage to an amount where it is worth of being an offensive heal skill.

• Tornado – Arcane Elite
  Cooldown reduced from 150s to 120s. Function changed to summon a tornado based on the current attunement at the target location for 15s. The tornado deals damage, launches enemies in it every 5 seconds for 600 range and applies conditions to enemies every 3 seconds:
  Water -> 1s of chill every 3s.
  Fire -> 2s of burning every 3s.
  Earth -> 1s of blind every 3s.
  Air -> 10 stacks of vulnerability (3s) every 3s.
  Transformations are bad for an elementalist because you lose your important skills to either support allies or kill enemies. compared to rampage and lich form, tornado’s damage was just way too low and its cc not great either, while making you an easy target for enemies. tornado gets changed in a way that works better with the ele’s kit, fits the attunement theme while still staying true to tornado’s function.

*Suggested damage numbers with a marauder amulet.

sephiroth.4217:

Jekkt.6045:

what does it mean to play in a “pro” environment? you pick 5 good players for a team, you decide on who is playing what and then you play a comp that is strong. if a build becomes unviable you change the build, if a class becomes unviable you change to another one. you keep players but you adapt. that’s what it means to be pro. having 8000 games on 1 prof and 300 on all others is a thing of the past.

It’s almost like you’re trying to say, the builds are now carrying the players?

#PassiveWars2.

it’s a fact that during the past 6 months the builds have gotten a lot easiert to play, but that’s not my point here.

a “pro” player needs to be able to adapt to balance changes. if you play a dps role in a team and suddenly the build or the class becomes unviable you don’t switch the player out but you make him play a different class/build with the same role (or if the class is still viable with but a build that has a different role the player could also switch to that, although i have seen many dps mesmers that struggle with a support playstyle and most of the time longtime support players are better on well mesmer than mesmer mains.).

i currently play revenant for my team and if revenant happens to become unviable on the 26th i will switch to something else, for example berserker or thief, depending on what will become strong.

why don’t you just copy the “cross x league divisions” achievement of year of the ascension, change it to 6 divisions and award the title for the time being?