Guild Wars 2

the demonic defiance nerf won’t change anything about the bunkerish nature of the current meta; it might even make it worse.

a certain counter to druids and mesmers are conditions. the only 2 condition builds currently working are chill reaper and viper revenant.

chill reaper had a bit trouble with the resistance uptime of 2 viper revenants so it didn’t see that much play. with the nerf to demonic defiance it is possible that viper revenants will disappear and berserker revenants will come back.

will reaper see more play? most likely not. you will never run 2 reapers instead of the current 2 viper revs because it’s already a big risk to run only one.

less conditions = less trouble for most bunkers.

than keeping the balance as it is now.

many builds are way too strong while others are below average.
with the recent pro league drama and the intention to go “esports”, a simple shave will not cut it..

at this point i believe, it would be more healthy for the game to tone everything down, especially defense, instead of trying to shave step by step.

if you take your time now it will be too late and people will not even bother with season 2 anymore. arenanet, if you lose your credibility now people will stop believing in your esports.

this is not a rant and i hope you read the feedback from your balance preview, because the few changes will not be enough to ease the frustration many players currently have.

5 staff sword/shield soldier chronomancers per team.

sounds good.

they don’t. nobody plays on vanilla specs. what they do is either ask friends that don’t play much anymore, use alt accs that have HoT, use friend’s accs that have HoT but never play PvP or invite random amber guys from hearts of the mists.

Rym.1469:

2. Power Revenant is back, no longer being hard-countered by Mallyx Revenant.

mallyx rev will still hardcounter power rev if the enemy does not run a necro.

it is quite plausible that there will be less viper revenants around, that won’t mean that there will be more necros though. necros have bad matchups against more or less everything right now and just don’t have the survivability a viper/wanderer revenant has.

the bad thing about this is that without condi revs or condi necros there will be even less to keep mesmers and other boon heavy bunkers/bruisers in check. → meta even worse.

you need to cross divisions in legendary 6 times.

i would rather trade all of the mallyx resistance for actual cleanses. building the whole condition defense of a class on a stripable, and now with a icd of 5s, boon is just silly.

change the trait to “remove two conditions when you use a mallyx skill that costs at least 20 energy”.

grouch, prevent capture point holding when under the effects of “well of precognition” or you will not change much in the current meta.

while i agree with some of the revenant changes (although others could have been implemented in a better way) the changes will still not do much against what’s ruining the meta.

- scrappers too tanky on marauder

- druid pets hitting too hard

- warrior basically useless

- chronomancer on point too strong

retal is based on your power. a more plausible thing would be, if we want to view vitality as “blood”, bleeding dealing increased damage to targets with high vitality; as some sort of grandmaster.

or even better, reintroduce deep wound from gw1 as a grandmaster, being applied when a target has 5 or more bleeds on them. would fit warrior because it was mainly on warrior skills.

the celestial meta will never end. i don’t understand why people can’t see that.

it is a game mode that revolves around defending points, so why would you decide not to run a build that can defend a point.

not only that but with the removal of minstrel and the indirect nerf to magi/cleric, the celestial amulet has also become the best amulet for support because running anything else than that on low hp classes is impossible.

if anything it’s anet’s fault, not the players’.

soloq i would go scrapper or druid and win far/close.

back then you could at least count cooldowns on stability for the most classes, now people have that many invuls and access to stability that it’s kind of obsolete.

rotations and focusing people down took a lot more skill in the hambow ele engi meta than it does now..

back then the elite was very strong and it would still be without HoT. now it’s not even worth taking it :^)

Drayos.8759:

Drekor.5217:

arenanet, make me happy and bring “normal” supports like bunker guards and “normal” dps like spellcaster nukers back into the game. nerf the broken stuff. while it’s disappointing that not all the classes have a place in the meta, i can understand that it’s sometimes hard to make everything viable.

/rant

“make me happy” you reliese theres Plenty who also want other things right, Elementalists have NEVER been a DPS in pvp, they’ve always been this sustain styled proffession, have you not read the Elementalist forums??, I mean at one point Fresh air was good, but for the past few metas atleast, the Elementalist has been rpetty bunkerish in Any build coming to light realistically.

are you aware that mesmers and necros are as much spellcasters as elementalists are?

and if a mesmer can become a very good support class so can an ele become a very good nuker if anet decides to do so.

xerrex attacked me when i was eating an apple. i don’t know how he did it but it is unfair that he can exploit the system like that.

no, we aren’t gettig any balance patches until two weeks before season 2.

fun fact, viper rev has half the damage of a hammer rev.

Laraley.7695:

I agree. I would take cele meta back without a hesistation. Bunker mesmer is pure [].

i would edit that word, i once got an infraction because of it :P

assuming 5 tickets increase per division and per wings you will need to complete ruby to buy all 4 wings.

people deliberately afk matches to drop their mmr while they not only ruin matches for other players but also ruin other’s team rating / pips.

i suggest that you finally implement the afk report option and if the same person gets reported multiple times by the majority of the players in a match he gets a 48h timeout.

to prevent trolling every player may only report 1 person for afking in a match.

after 5 matches your mmr will be back to what it used to be… they should have reset the mmr for every player and i hope they will do that in future seasons…

fyi mmr is still the same one from before. my team keeps getting pro league teams because we have a fairly high mmr, so it’s impossible to farm randoms. of course sometimes it happens that you get a random enemy team but usually that’s not the case.

the ascended amulet “vial of salt” has the wrong stats. it currently has lowe stats than exotic amulets lol. not to be salty but fix pls.

would also be nice if you can choose sinister and viper stats on it.

well it might not count but after facing 5 pro league teams it’s gonna eat up your rating…. and it’s especially annoying if you see other noname teams on the leaderboards that haven’t faced a single one of those no mmr reset is terrible…

what i’m wondering is, what if the pro league teams are in the top 5 of the leaderboards? challenger league is supposed to be for non pro teams to get access to pro for which you need to be in top 5.

3,5k is by no means low for what pvp had in the past 3 years. it’s above smite and above regular hots numbers. it’s actually a decent start for the pro league. also the matches haven’t been that bad from what i’ve seen.
just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean that it’s bad.

pvp is not more stale than some 20mins laning phases in mobas… gw2 is just generally harder to understand and to get into.

a rewatch feature and build templates (and better shoutcasters..) would definitely do wonders for the pvp scene. balancing is not what makes a game an esports, ofc it’s nice to have but not everything can be viable/balanced at all times.

what makes a game an esports is:

it has to be fun. when it’s fun people naturally play it.

when you play there has to be some kind of rewards and a longterm goal (i still wish for some master skins for classes, when you win 2k matches on a class for example, something to display that you’re not just a fotm player)

there have to be tournaments and competition, and at the top the pro league.
for players who are not at the top there needs to be stuff that motivates them to get there, stuff that gives them infos about the top (rewatch the pro league matches with a rewatch feature, not on stream).

the interaction between pro league and playerbase is also very low. other games like hots have very often some sorts of blogs by top players talking about matches, setups, strats and what they think about the balance.
gw2 players have more of a “no it’s mine!” mentality; the more you can be secretive the better for you.

you play 2 of it because with 2 you can switch condis back and forth for aoe resistance and the amount of conditions is high enough to take down classes that have enough cleanse/bypass teamfight cleansing. the same thing works with necros.. just that they’re not as mobile as revenants.

fumcheg.1936:

Sunshine.5014:

epouvante.7392:

Go make all professions with 20k base hp and maybe cele could be desapear

This.

Without Cele, some classes have less than 12k HP, which is in the territory of a one shot. People have been complaining about being forced to trait/spec bunker for a long time because of that. Bring all the base HP to 20k, and then you can nerf the sustain from all of them.

Really? Did you know there are several amulets with vitality or/and toughness stats? Celestial has nothing to do with compensation of low HP pool. It’s just a huge buff for hybrid builds especially if they have access to burn. Thief has 11k HP pool as well and don’t get any profit of using Cele. It had to be removed from the game long time ago.

celestial is not about burn… it’s about half support stats + half offensive stats. or why do you think well mesmers run celestial and not sentinel… some classes can’t go valk/crusader because they need hp/toughness or precision. celestial offers that, even if you don’t have any burning.

dh is still broken in the most 1v1 and 2v2 scenarios.. it just falls appart in bigger fights which makes it useless no matter how strong it is.
condi necro (or necros in general) suffer a bit from the same problem. if you need to babysit something it’s never a good thing.

fyi, if they buff berserkers by giving them more sustain and trait/weapon polish what will come out of it isn’t a shoutbow… it will be a condition/hybrid abomination spamming burn on you.. idk how many people would be happy about that

oh and daredevil is already a gimmick, maybe just not gimmicky enough compared to scrapper druid and dragonhunter.

shadow arts gm trait: shadow form. immune to direct damage above 90% hp. would wonder how much QQ it would cause :^)

Neko.9021:

Tempest is fine. It’s used on the top teams of PvP and Raids. Can’t speak for WvW/GvG though, I suppose. But for the things that matter, it’s great.

just because people use it doesn’t mean that it’s fine or well designed… it just means that it’s not completely useless.

dead or alive -> heal for 3500-5000 (number depends on balance tests :^) when you enter and leave berserk mode, if you take lethal damage in berserk mode you leave it without dying. should help with the sustain problems.

the condi cleanse when you enter berserk mode should get increased to 3+. druid removes 13 condis in celestial avatar. compared to 1 in berserk mode is a bit of a joke.

tbh most traits are really bad.. the rage skills trait, last blaze for example… it burns enemies for 3s when you use a rage skill..

what it should do: give you 5 stacks of might for 10s, it’s a rage skill after all, so that the burn deals more damage, and it should reduce the cooldown of rage skills.

witcher.3197:

Jekkt.6045:

witcher.3197:

Jekkt.6045:

this build is complete garbage… not only do you die easily to focus in a teamfight because you don’t have an actual stunbreak or teleport but you also lack ranged support to go offnode when you need it but still have to support allies.

tripple utility shout is a terrible idea and i would put scepter before staff and dagger at last. diamond skin is way too situational to be first pick and is more or less only useful in a 1v1 against a condi build, which will end in a tie because xou don’t have the damage to kill it either nor should you be in a 1v1 as a supporter at all.

this just shows the lack of knowledge of the metabattle admins to put this in te meta section…

thanks, by putting it there karl will now think tempest is fine and doesn’t need many fixes/qol and traitoverhauls

This is by far the most common ele/tempest build in both EUand NA high tier.

Some people are going to win thousands of dollars with this build while you’re posting here about how you can’t comprehend why it’s good, which (by your logic) obviously means that everyone else is wrong.

How does that make you feel?

i never said anything about not comprehending “why it’s good”, because it’s not. running support on a build that can get yourself killed easily against teams that know how to focus is a terrible idea. most of the eles that played in the qualifiers are the same bandwagon d/d eles that have never touched a staff or a scepter in their lives before, just with a new build that requires them to press shouts instead of cantrips :^) i don’t need thousands of dollars to know which eles suck and which builds are bad. bring 1 smart marauder herald and your “most common eu and na” build bites to the dust; and there goes your support.

Look at Auramancer as an MMO healer. Those usually don’t have the most amazing sustain, but you can’t say they suck. Auramancer might occssionally need help from allies, but it can also save others from spikes by sharing Shocking or Frost Aura, Rebound, Protection etc. It’s a very valuable asset to the team, it’s just not completely faceroll.

i do understand what you mean and while i would have been in favour of a strong but squishy healer pre-HoT i am not a big fan of it with so much random AoE damage floating around currently. when you have a tempest in a teamfight you need a 2nd class that can peel and heal.
unlike d/d ele, tempest is not strong on its own, only in combination with other specs like druid or even dragonhunter it can be really good, but then you have the no disengage when focused problem again when you take tripple shout and the uselessness of diamond skin in a teamfight.

the build on metabattle is.. at most.. an example and should not be taken as the tempest build. if you run that exact build you will soon run into problems. i play tempest and i know my class, after all i have around 3k games on ele.

Tomiyou.3790:

Anyone still playing this? I’m really wondering if this still works after HoT (DH, druid, scrapper, …). Btw, does anyone know how this would translate into WvW?

this build never worked to begin with… it’s a onetrick pony that releases all its damage and is left without sustain for the next 10-20 seconds, with no condi cleanse or anything that protects it from getting focused.

the only dps build that ever “worked” was scepter/focus with fresh air, which is even more terrible after HoT. if you wanna play a dps caster then play mesmer.

witcher.3197:

Jekkt.6045:

this build is complete garbage… not only do you die easily to focus in a teamfight because you don’t have an actual stunbreak or teleport but you also lack ranged support to go offnode when you need it but still have to support allies.

tripple utility shout is a terrible idea and i would put scepter before staff and dagger at last. diamond skin is way too situational to be first pick and is more or less only useful in a 1v1 against a condi build, which will end in a tie because xou don’t have the damage to kill it either nor should you be in a 1v1 as a supporter at all.

this just shows the lack of knowledge of the metabattle admins to put this in te meta section…

thanks, by putting it there karl will now think tempest is fine and doesn’t need many fixes/qol and traitoverhauls

This is by far the most common ele/tempest build in both EUand NA high tier.

Some people are going to win thousands of dollars with this build while you’re posting here about how you can’t comprehend why it’s good, which (by your logic) obviously means that everyone else is wrong.

How does that make you feel?

i never said anything about not comprehending “why it’s good”, because it’s not. running support on a build that can get yourself killed easily against teams that know how to focus is a terrible idea. most of the eles that played in the qualifiers are the same bandwagon d/d eles that have never touched a staff or a scepter in their lives before, just with a new build that requires them to press shouts instead of cantrips :^) i don’t need thousands of dollars to know which eles suck and which builds are bad. bring 1 smart marauder herald and your “most common eu and na” build bites to the dust; and there goes your support.

this build is complete garbage… not only do you die easily to focus in a teamfight because you don’t have an actual stunbreak or teleport but you also lack ranged support to go offnode when you need it but still have to support allies.

tripple utility shout is a terrible idea and i would put scepter before staff and dagger at last. diamond skin is way too situational to be first pick and is more or less only useful in a 1v1 against a condi build, which will end in a tie because xou don’t have the damage to kill it either nor should you be in a 1v1 as a supporter at all.

this just shows the lack of knowledge of the metabattle admins to put this in te meta section…

thanks, by putting it there karl will now think tempest is fine and doesn’t need many fixes/qol and traitoverhauls

it should make true shot a 100% knockback, that way it is avoidable/blockable but the knockback has a lower cooldown and only works for true shot. that’s not the only thing that needs adjustments though.. trap dazes need to be reworked too because what they do right now is disrupt anybody from getting into melee range, even moreso if you cc a dragonhunter.

make it 3s resistance per aura applied and we have a deal, that way the trait will at least be worthy of a gm trait.

because originally they were no cantrips, only recently they got adopted :P

Koviko.3248:

MadRabbit.3179:

If you are going to run mostly cantrips, then there really is no reason to run Tempest. You are better off going off Arcane. The overloads themselves aren’t strong enough to take Tempest in and of itself; the only reason it’s viable is the synergy with auras.

Your assessment is a bit off.

Overload Air is a very powerful attack if you can get the full cast off and has a large enough radius to cover most points in PvP. Couple those lightning strikes with your own (or a teammate’s) burst and you have essentially killed your target.

This assumes that you are capable of getting the full cast. Stability, controlling the fight, waiting for the opponent to use their CCs, etc. are all ways of almost ensuring you will complete your cast.

Also, the passive stun break from Gale Song makes Tempest very desirable for fighting CC-heavy classes like Dragonhunters.

As for auras, just because you lose some from shouts doesn’t mean you have none. Personally, I’ve found that full shout builds are complete trash outside of teamfights. I opt for at least one cantrip, most of the time. Without cantrips, you will almost certainly die to traps.

I’m not saying that Arcane or Tempest is better, just that shouts aren’t the only reason to go for Tempest.

cantrips are usually your selfish utility skills, very powerful but only help you while shouts are kind of the sloppy aoe support skills that could use some buffs, like feel the burn or flash freeze – the other could use a cooldown cut.

going full shouts is usually a bit suicidal i’d say.. so when i play shouts i usually pick the heal, feel the burn + flash freeze for short cd heals/cleanse and lightning flash. as elite i pick rebound as a filler shout.. not because it’s good. fgs is still a viable alternative while tornado is not.

air overload is more of an “added pressure” than something that actually spikes people down. often in a teamfight both sides have enough sustain to fight for quite a bit and air overload can be the trigger to make their defense collapse.

if you’re trying to play tempest as a support build then you kinda have to pick earth for your own survival and tempest + water for the aoe heals. if you’re playing more of a selfish build then arcane might be better for some players, not for me though.

druid is too strong. scrapper is too strong. dragonhunter is too strong.

all 3 of them are over the top compared to other builds, but you can’t compare them with eachother because they fulfill different roles and play differently. apples are apples after all and not bananas.

for druids it’s the disruptive playstyle paired with the extreme sustain they can have with avatar and the pet damage they can dish out.

for scrapper it’s the aoe on point pressure they can put out while being very tanky, despite not even using very tanklike amulets, and very capable of healing for large amounts of health while not being a support elite spec.

for dragonhunter it’s the risk vs reward as a dps spec. very good sustain for a dps spec, many hardly avoidable skills and a wide kitten nal of useful skills that other specs could only dream of.

i’m not trying to hate on those specs although it can be very frustrating from time to time, especially when your own elite spec is even worse than the base class… but speaking from an objective view those 3 elite specs/builds are currently overperforming comparing to everything else out there. we do not want to bring other stuff up to their level, powercreep is undesireable..

one thing i always said appart from faster autos and shatterstone was..

make lightning strike and air attunement damage delayed, give it a 0,5-0,75s delay with an animation on the enemy that’s gonna proc, a black cloud around or above them, indicating that they are gonna be struck by a lightning bolt… but make it hit really hard. people were always crying fresh air is all instacast and unavoidable. this way it would be avoidable but punish you really hard for not doing so. oh and by hitting really hard i would double the damage. it’s only 2-2,5k atm anyway…

i don’t think cantrips have the slightest chance of getting a buff, especially now with tempest. keeping people fixated on cantrips is not something anet wants to do when they try to sell us an underpowered elite spec.

having said that, tempest does have good options for stunbreaks and condi cleanses.

if you run soldier/trooper runes with water/x/tempest you can get double cleanses from shouts which allows you to run lightning flash+2 shouts and drop cleansing fire. earth overload will act as your armor of earth (overload can be stowed to give you normal 4s of 3 stacks stability).

it is a possibility to play d/d ele with tempest and only use overloads when really needed…
i’m not saying tempest is fine or anything, or that cantrips like lightning flash couldn’t need a buff… but those are the facts.

PowerBottom.5796:

I like the build quite a lot, although it’s not top-tier IMHO, because of a few reasons:

nothing that ele has is top tier atm, by far not. d/d ele is still “playable” but seriously, why take a d/d ele if you can take a scrapper which is more tanky, has as much cleanse and heal + gets stealth for res and engage/disengage.

as far as dps builds go eles never even had a viable build to begin with; no fresh air was never viable.

glaphen.5230:

Jekkt.6045:

Iohanna.4863:

Jekkt.6045:

WuGzaGenius.5684:

Cele / sentinels auramancer tempest, is by far the most insane bunker atm.

lolwat..

He is not wrong.

he is.

settler/cleric druid can bunker way better than a celestial tempest. oh and sentinel tempest is complete garbage – the healing output is really bad.

Tempest does more than healing, spams Frost, Magnetic and Shocking Aura on their team constantly while kittenting out protection from Overload Earth and massive damage from Overload Air spam.

yeah and that’s something ele has always been capable of doing… druid has aoe slow and daze which can have a bigger impact in a teamfight when used right.

Iohanna.4863:

Jekkt.6045:

WuGzaGenius.5684:

Cele / sentinels auramancer tempest, is by far the most insane bunker atm.

lolwat..

He is not wrong.

he is.

settler/cleric druid can bunker way better than a celestial tempest. oh and sentinel tempest is complete garbage – the healing output is really bad.

even soldier scrapper is a lot better at bunkering than tempest.