Guild Wars 2

My answer is I am there to complete the content.

If you choose to infer another answer out of that very simple response I have no control over what crazy conclusions you want to imagine.

Simple Answer: When I am in a group I want to complete the content. That is my only thought and my only bar to measure performance.

Complex Answer: When I join a PUG, it’s usually because I want the gold/tokens at the end of the run. That’s all I am there for. If I get it done fast or I get it done slow I don’t really care so long as it gets done.

I’ve done countless PUG dungeon groups. In all that time I’ve never had anyone say a word to me on any of my characters and what I am doing or how I play. I’ve also never seen anyone else get called out on what they are doing nor do I call people out on bad form as well. The most obvious of which is Greatsword Mesmers who are in melee range (their Spatial Surge does more dmg at range). Long as we’re able to complete the content I simply don’t care if we could have completed it a few minutes faster.

This is not to imply all PUG groups succeed. I’ve ran plenty of groups where the group just was a total failure and incapable of doing the content. People don’t react by flipping out or blocking each other or any other nonsense, they simply leave the group. Most of the time it’s due to people not knowing the boss mechanics, such as the count to 2 and dodge mechanics of COE 2/3. However the ratio of these fail groups is extremely small compared to the number that succeed. Consequently the number of groups that are “amazing” full DPS groups where everyone is chugging out massive DPS are also relatively small in PUGs (usually because those players form their own groups).

However what it is to say is that, on a vast majority of basis, anyone going in with any spec in a PUG will be able to complete the dungeon content. Big Tower.5423 isn’t going to be incapable of clearing dungeon content because he went healer/support. You certainly can, and will, make the argument that he could contribute to his group more by min-maxing out his DPS. What you fail to grasp however is that playing games is at it’s base a selfish act (we’re playing for our own entertainment) that is ultimately harmless if the content still gets done. Ratcheting up your McCarthy level rhetoric about how we’re “leeches” when you have no way of telling how anyone in the group is actually is doing is absurd. The content still gets done, so who really cares?

Zelyhn.8069:

Or Kodiak would yell something along the lines of:
Let me join my zerg the way I want!
Don’t impose a fight on me!
Let’s wave our arms around and pretend to fight, no one can tell we are dealing no damage to each other anyway!

1/10 effort.

Grevender.9235:

so if 1vs1 is not supposed to happen, what if you want to reach your precious cuddling zerg when first logging in the game and you have to lonely travel from WP to zerg and you find a bad bad unattended really unforeseeable event like….meeting an enemy on the war field?
Will you pm him “hey, this is not supposed to happen!”, “this is not what the game was designed for!!!”.
Maybe it works.

If I ran into someone 1v1 I’d more than likely end up dead cause I usually run around with a staff on and most 1vX roamers are usually geared/spec’d for 1vX encounters. However this pretty much rarely happens (but still does) because on the top tier servers of the game we actually care about winning and doing well and 1vX contributes almost nothing to that.

I suppose it’s better than the alternative of crying about how there’s a whole world sized Zerg in World vs World while simultaneously boohooing about how we’re unbalanced in 1v1 in WvW even though there’s already a huge number of baked in unbalancing factors (gear quality, food/consumables, wvw bonuses, prebuffs such as bloodlust stacks, etc etc etc) which can lead to countless different outcomes. You’d think any person of intelligence would attempt to grade balance entirely off of a clean environment like SPvP where everyone already knows we lack instead of attempting to claim imbalance in an environment that promotes imbalance by default.

Daywolf.2630:

My ignore list says otherwise.

Your ignore list says a lot of things.

istariwk.8312:

Molch.2078:

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

The only viable build with the staff is support/healing.

Besides anyone who thought “dps all the way” left ele a long time ago.

Thats funny, because Ele is #1 dps in PvE.

Says who?

Spreadsheets that don’t reflect actual in game DPS.

Neko.9021:

Perhaps you might consider that the advice some people here are giving tries to explain to people how to DO well and become better players, rather than simply how to LOOK like you’re doing well.

Let me say what you seem to be unwilling to say: “Play our way or you’re a leech on your group.”

Except you know no one would buy that guilt trip so you try to mask it up under the guise of making people “better players.” I ain’t buying it. You have a stickied thread in this forum talking about specs and yet people still come along and ask for build advice. Clearly others aren’t buying it either.

Daywolf.2630:

So you are saying that from my obvious example “a diverse group” you would not have any idea what happened? Or now are we talking only DPS speed groups in cof1 …which btw was nerfed. Oh and you have never wiped at the spider with 4 in the group? So very simple? uh-huh…
And I said – if I had to back off to figure it out, but I’m quite aware of others as I play and still fulfill my role, as I also said. Just like years of running a cleric in EQ1, you learn to not just focus on only what you are doing, but become very knowledgeable of the other classes in play. Toss out the WoW mentality, breath the free air.

Melee DPS stacking is not something specific to COF P1 and the fact you seem to think it is shows how little you actually know about speed running dungeons in this game. It’s used in a large variety of dungeons and encounters. For someone who claims to be all up on game about knowing classes and abilities you’d think you would know that.

Kinda shameful really and establishes how little credibility you have to talk about these matters. Oh wait, I forgot you’re a magic man who can see all in real time. What was I thinking?

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

You act like people aren’t going to notice you dropping Ice Spike for the entire fight. Or like your shout heals aren’t healing for 3k a pop, etc.

And you act like anyone is actually sitting in Water Attunement just spamming Ice Spike let alone advocating that anyone should be doing it. What point are you trying to make?

Daywolf.2630:

More theory? Uh no I can quite well do that, thank you. Even if I had to back off and watch for 30secs. But generally, no, I can quite well zoom out the camera and watch what’s going on during my autos, understand the animations of all the classes, their timing, knowledge of their cool downs, keeping an eye on the mobs health. It’s the mobs that are brainless minions, not the players.

edit: and I can even give an easy example anyone would catch, even in a pure PUG. A group in AC, working the spider. They have a diverse group all doing their thing. Got the mobs health down quick, their heavy dps warrior is chugging away with obvious beautiful DPS execution – and suddenly he DC’s, then the party wipes. They wait 5m and he doesn’t come back. So the party kicks him and puts in the LFG: lf1m AC warrior dps only. Then you come in, decked out in white gear, maybe even a 0dps toy sword hehe. Gunna fool them real good, eh? Or even low DPS, they not going to notice? How many wipes until they wonder who is at fault? hehehe. And really, it’s not that complicated. I’ve spotted it in plenty of PUGs over the years, and this game is really rather simplistic.

Most high DPS groups revolve around melee stacking. You even brought one up in the case of AC Spider where everyone stacks in a corner. You can zoom your camera out all you want but there’s simply no plausible case you can make where you can tell what 5 people are doing. Oh, except when you stop doing your own job and contributing to the group to ensure that everyone else is doing what they’re supposed to be doing. Seems like a real winning strategy there.

As for your scenario, you have no idea what is or isn’t the cause. You can immediately assign blame to the new person for you assuming he’s not fulfilling the same shoes as the last warrior but you have no way of actually telling. It could very well be that the last warrior was carrying your sub-standard group along and the new guy can’t carry your dead weight. I mean that’s what my first take on the scenario where 4 dudes who claimed to be super time DPS couldn’t 4 man an easy boss like Spider.

Even then more realistic scenario (and not the hyperbolic one I used to reinforce my point) is the guy will come in with what you would likely consider to be an inferior spec/gear setup yet between the 5 of you the boss will still die and you will move on in content.

Most games over the years have had some sort of way to measure DPS even if not supported directly in game (mostly through “ACT” which can parse combat logs). This one does not. Unless a player is being completely and totally obvious about playing badly there’s virtually no way to tell.

Daywolf.2630:

If say for a certain reason I advertise for a DPS group for a specific situation (or need more DPS for the group whatever), and you come in with some utility build on low/no DPS, I’m going to spot it in 10secs and brutally kick. Why? because talking about judging based on theory is one thing, which is still just theory, but another thing in the actual game where some people have all the classes leveled and know what to expect from you, know exactly what you are doing, or not doing, and when your heavy attacks are suppose to drop and see the mobs health bar drop and how much. In other words you think all the players are idiots or something? Then stand around in a dungeon and argue over theory? Insta-kick and block.

You’re all bravado. You’re mostly likely so preoccupied with what you’re doing to really analyze in real time what all other 4 players are doing in your party and whether or not their attacks are doing what you think they should be doing. You may have your suspicions about people but really you’d have no way of factually telling unless it’s something completely obvious like a mesmer with a Great Sword in melee range.

I’ve personally done more than a few speedrun groups in PVT or Knight’s gear simply linking similar looking Berserker gear in the ol COF days and no one ever told the difference. It’s not that people were “too stupid” to notice, it’s simply a fact of the matter that there’s really no way to notice unless the player is being completely obvious about it.

However pretending that you have some heightened sense of things and can sort out 5 players hitting the same target with a variety of skills and abilities and instantly recall the damage percentage each ability should be doing against any number of bosses in game over the course of milliseconds is just absurd.

Zelyhn.8069:

You are the only one imposing anything Kodiak

I impose nothing but the imposition that nothing should be imposed.

Imagi.4561:

Where did I make such a claim? I provided the personal story as an example, to refute your claim that individual play was not part of ArenaNet’s “design”.

Speaking of logical fallacies, you seem familiar with one called a “red herring.”

You mean where someone brings up a completely irrelevant fact (personal story is solo) in order to mislead or detract from the actual issue (wvw/spvp/etc weren’t designed for solo play)?

Yes, you could say I’m in the midst of dealing with one now.

Looks like standard gear build with 2000 Power, 45% crit, 75%+ Crit Dmg, 16000 HP and 1600 Toughness. I run something very similar for WvW and get similar numbers.

Imagi.4561:

How is solo play not “intended by the game design”? If I recall correctly, there is an entire set of quests called the “personal story” that are intended to be played alone.

Are you somehow trying to imply that the Elementalist, or any class, is incapable at completing the Personal Story?

Or are you just trying to strawman one aspect of game play that was intended to be solo’d in an attempt to justify playing solo in another aspect of game play that wasn’t designed to be played solo?

Zelyhn.8069:

Hey let me spreadsheet the way I want you bloody elitist

I fully support your right to Spreadsheet.

I don’t support you trying to impose your Spreadsheets on everyone else.

Zelyhn.8069:

Yep, and that happened right before your credibility level reached the Mariana Trench.

In case you didn’t know, we also use spreadsheets to measure heals, damage reduction, and plenty of other “non-elitist non-radioactive” stuff. In fact the spreadsheets are just here to let us know with accuracy what our brain instinctively computes while playing in-game.

Whatever you gotta tell yourself to justify spending all your time on Spreadsheets that have no real way of reflecting actual performance in game.

Imagi.4561:

1vX balance can mean a great deal to someone’s gameplay if they prefer soloing in PvE, roaming in WvW, or want to PvP in general. Of course individual play is an aspect of the game that was intended, and should be supported.

I think it’s arrogant to say that solo play “contributes nothing” just because you, personally, find it trivial.

I think it’s arrogant to expect the game to be balanced around a style of game play that obviously wasn’t intended by the game design. I mean I get some people like it and hooray for them but just because you decide to use a screwdriver like a hammer doesn’t mean the company who designed the screwdriver should change it to support that.

Zelyhn.8069:

Wow Kodiak, I’m not sure I am the one lacking reading comprehension then!

The only person who said to go DPS is Guanglai.
Which is kind of strange actually because Gaunglai’s build is bad for dps in dungeons :o

The uninterpreted facts are that OP asked what staff excels at.

The majority of the replies told him that staff is either balanced or good for utility/support and other “non elitist” stuff.

And then you jumped in, fully armed with your bias-loaded weapons and ready to slaughter any poor spreadsheet wielder who would dare to show up.

It’s okay, the OP got what he needed and another soul was saved from the Spreadsheetamentalists’ destructive advice.

Grevender.9235:

Kodiak.3281:

Grevender.9235:

if you cower behind the zerg, and god forbid someone pulls you out of there….maybe.
Try to get out, roam, do 1vs1 and 1vs2 and you will instantly notice what’s missing.

What do 1vX contribute to the over all WvW effort? Nothing.

we are not here to establish what contribute does it gives, we are here to discuss if that scenario is balanced for Elementalist or not.
The answer is: no, is not balanced.

on a side note:
- stomping gives points to your server (using skills from the safety of a zerg doesn’t)
- only with direct confrontation (1vs1 and 1vs2) you can ascertain class balance: yelling “p0wn3d u n00b!!!” to unlucky folks that crossed your AoE while escaping from your zerg is not going to improve your individual skills and create a very misleading concept of “balance”.

If the scenario contributes nothing to the WvW effort then why would I waste my time on it? I don’t care if we’re balanced 1vX because 1vX contributes nothing to any element of game play. It’s something people do that was never intended by the game designers so why would you expect them to balance things around an aspect of game play that was never intended/supported? It’s just naive.

As for “cowering” behind the Zerg, it’s the Zerg that wins WvW. Elementalist is one of the best characters in these scenarios having great AOE support and great ranged AOE DPS/CC. Sure a Guardian can bring AOE Support, but lacks the ranged AOE DPS/CC. A Necro can bring the ranged AOE DPS/CC but lacks the AOE Support. We have it all in one tidy package.

Zelyhn.8069:

The fact that some people could finish most content without thinking about what they do is irrelevant. People do not come on this forum asking for this, they come here in order to learn how to perform better. Maybe you should learn how to respect them.

No the facts are the original poster came in and said:

1. Should I go healer or DPS?
2. Don’t think healing is bad for PvE and tell me to just DPS the entire way.
3. Is Staff better for Healing or Utility?

As usual the lack of reading comprehension kicked in and the Spreadsheetamentalists around here immediately started telling the original poster, who specifically stated don’t tell him to go full DPS, to start going full DPS.

This is why comments like this are destructive to the community. People come here looking for some specific advice, and instead of getting it they get a lecture on how they should be playing X way and if they aren’t then they aren’t helping their group and they should feel bad for not doing so. Who wants a guilt trip every time they come to ask for advice?

People should really learn to read and listen to what people are looking for before you attempt to “help” someone.

Big Tower.5423:

I will go full cleric, staff ele perhaps some celestial

Sounds good man

Have fun with it. Don’t worry too much about these Spreadsheetamentalists on these forums who tell you to play their way or you’re wrong. You’ll contribute just fine to a group.

Grevender.9235:

if you cower behind the zerg, and god forbid someone pulls you out of there….maybe.
Try to get out, roam, do 1vs1 and 1vs2 and you will instantly notice what’s missing.

What do 1vX contribute to the over all WvW effort? Nothing.

Terrible in SPvP.

Who cares about face roll easy PvE where literally anyone in any class in any spec in any gear can succeed?

Great in WvW.

Navzar.2938:

How do they consider game usage data for balance anyway?
I really hope it’s not x% of people play class y when they’re deciding which professions are too strong as a whole. After all, eles have a popularity boost because of their flashy skills.

I suppose a similar system would a show some indications for which builds are OP/UP.

It’s all about game metrics. Everything you do in game is logged and tracked. That includes everything you aren’t doing, such as not using certain skills.

All that information can then be pulled into a variety of reports as needed. For example lets say they want to take a look at all the Elementalist Utility skills over the last 120 days. They might pull a report for Utility usage for all Elementalists 1-40, 41-79, and 80. This will list what utilities are equipped the most, how often they get used, what content they are used in (dungeon, fractal, farm pve, spvp, wvw, etc) and so on and so forth.

Based on this information they make an analysis. They see Conjures aren’t getting used much. So now they have to try to figure out why aren’t Conjures getting used. Is it because Cantrips are so strong that Cantrips feel inferior? Is it because Conjures are weaker than all the other options? I’m sure they have a discussion, pull more reports, and look at the data of what’s happening in game to start with a solid, factual base for a course of action.

At this point they decide on a course of action and test it out. For example in the upcoming patch they are going to buff up Conjures because they presumably found in their analysis that Conjures were weak and didn’t present a compelling reason to equip them other than LH or FGS. This is why you see a lot of forums are full of complaints about, “You buffed what? But no one uses that! Why are you buffing things no one uses!?!” and again it’s entirely based on usage data and them trying to drive skill usage.

So when they give a presentation and inform people that there is more than one attunement and using attunement swapping it’s likely because the metrics told them that a certain % of the player base sticks to one attunement. That’s what the game play is telling them we’re doing so that is what they react to. People tend to forget that the forums and people who visit the forums only reflect a small % of the over all user base so even if they are informed about the Elementalist it’s not representative of the whole (which is what the game devs are concerned about).

Short Answer: Warrior.

Long Answer: Warrrrrrrrrrior.

Honestly I think he was informed pretty well based on game usage data.

I think it’s the general perception on the state of the Elementalist that is largely misinformed. It’s not very surprising when this forum is basically full of people who either hate the Elementalist but don’t want to seem to move on or the other group of guys who if you don’t play their way then you’re wrong.

To reiterate what I said was: No one has any way to prove how much DPS anyone is actually doing in game. I could go into a group with white gear and no traits selected and we’ll still complete the content. Min-maxing DPS doesn’t matter long as the content gets done.

What was understood was: Omg this guy is telling people to go into dungeons with white gear and leech off groups with no traits selected!

I can’t fix a lack of reading comprehension.

Oh and community? What we have on the Elementalist forums is a group of people who hate the Elementalist yet still hang around these forums complaining about Ride the Lightning and another group of people who seem to have made it their personal crusade to make sure everyone plays their way because they feel it’s the only way to play the game. Most others have simply stopped coming here and simply enjoy themselves in game and ignore the Elementalist forums because of those two groups of trolls that have made their home here on the Ele Forums.

Didn’t we already outrage to this sufficiently a few months ago?

Neko.9021:

I agree, Zelhyn. This is perhaps one of the absolute worst ways to look at group content, and is the exact reason why PUGing often turns out so badly. “No one can see what I’m doing, so it doesn’t matter what I do as long as I can leech off the group” is what I read from this.

Again, I’ve done hundreds of PUGs on all varieties of game content and if our group fails it’s due to people not knowing boss mechanics or are so terribly bad that they die in the first 30 seconds of a fight. The later usually happens when someone who shouldn’t be following some elitist full glass cannon “maximum dps” build advice is attempting to follow it and dies in the first 15 seconds of the fight.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

In a good group, everyone should be contributing about 15-25% damage per player, depending on the specific role you are playing. That’s a pretty noticeable difference if you’re midway through a dungeon, some guy drops, and you add a pug and your DPS goes down 20%.

Also, there are pretty good indicators that everyone can see, such as, you know, the ele being in water atturnement all the time and just sitting at1200 range casting Ice Spike.

There’s absolutely no way to measure that 20% though. You can assume it’s down 20% because you think it is but reality could be is that the person who dropped was boosting everyone else’s DPS by a certain amount and the new PUG is actually topping the DPS compared to the rest of you now. The fact is there’s no way to know.

All you have is blind assumptions based on theories you crafted on a spreadsheet.

haviz.1340:

Strang.8170:

Wait, telling him not to worry about what people say about him in a videogame is bad advice?

Gw2 pve is so kitten easy that what he said is true. Casual player does not need to care overly much about how minmaxed his build is. As long as he can decently play his character, he could as well throw trait points around randomly and wear any gear he happened to find.

Exactly, only thing that matters in pve is getting gold rewards medal and chest and you can do it even while being naked and without traits.

Yea I really don’t get it myself. I’ve cleared all the content in the game on a variety of classes in a variety of gear and almost never had problems. The “almost” usually is more people not having any clue what they need to do (IE: not knowing about fractal mechanics) than anyone being low DPS, not playing “correctly” or being a particular class.

I mean most of the time people you run into game, a large % of the population don’t even visit the game forums (which is true in any game). I see Support Elementalists in dungeons all the time and we have problems clearing the content. Nor do I feel some compulsive need to harp on them and tell them, “Well you know if you spec’d and played like this our dungeon run would have gone 0.0001% faster and smoother!” especially when there’s absolutely zero way to prove it.

Zelyhn.8069:

Congratulations! You just won the 2013 award for worse advice of the year!

Actually you’re a shoe in for the award for trying to create an ultra elitist environment where if anything you attempt to do isn’t what you think is the theoretically maximum DPS they can do then they are bad and should feel bad.

The irony of the situation is you can’t even actually prove those are the numbers you are actually doing in game. You can only take the numbers that are given to you and calculate them in a spreadsheet but have no way of proving that on boss X in game you did Y DPS.

The only difference here is I’m willing to be up front and be honest about there’s no way to prove how much DPS you are doing in game and you refuse to see it.

Big Tower.5423:

Thank you guys for the input, i think il go full healer/utlity for both pve and wvwvw (yes i know dps is meta… but im not a speedrun guy :P i wanna save the pugs xD

Don’t even worry about it man.

You could go in and do dungeons in white gear level 80 with zero stats or even any traits spent and provided you’re skilled enough to not flop over dead you can pretty much pull anything off and no one will ever say a word.

No one is going to call you out on your DPS or how you play because the truth is no one in game has any way to prove factually that one person is doing more DPS than another. They can calculate it all theoretically about what you should be doing to theoretically get the maximum DPS but since no one can actually check if you’re doing maximum DPS or even no DPS it doesn’t matter.

Sounds like you want to do support, go that route and if any one gives you any guff (not that I’ve ever had anyone question anything I’m doing in dungeons over the course of 100’s of PUG dungeons) just tell them to mind their business.

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

The only viable build with the staff is support/healing.

Besides anyone who thought “dps all the way” left ele a long time ago.

Oh boy here we go.

Now we’re going to get the theoretical DPS guys coming out throwing out theoretical numbers they calculated on paper but have absolutely no way to prove how much they are actually doing in game due to movement, positioning, boss mechanics or otherwise.

Thanks a lot.

Can’t even post properly so I’m just going to blindly assume your video is bad and your build is bad.

DiogoSilva.7089:

EDIT: The sarcastic buff to LH mentioned in a few posts above is actually a real buff. Blind almost never works on bosses, and LH is used against bosses, for its high damage and spammable blast finishers. If you remove blind for a 5% chance-on-critical to deal extra 2-5k damage, it’s a pve buff.

LH is also used for farming/leveling/trash mobs because their attack speeds are often times slower than the 3rd hit goes off meaning you as a group will take almost no damage.

The blind is huge.

Divinity.8041:

Seeing as no elementalists were harmed in the making of the last competitive tournament in GW2…I think devs are going to rethink the class.

This is just my opinion, but that was probably the boldest statement the class could make. Not that there was just one…there was just none.

/rhyme

We need there to be a few GW2 tournaments with no Elementalists for a while before they finally break down and come to terms with the fact there’s a problem.

ANet does 100% of their balancing based on metrics and game play. If people aren’t playing the class, that’s a huge statement louder than any forum whine post. If you want to see changes, simply play something else and show the developers that the situation on the Elementalist is simply unacceptable.

Oh sure they’re going to fumble around in the dark for a while and make changes to things like Conjures to try to fix the situation but the more less and less we are represented and the less and less we play the class the quicker they will come to the realization that the Elementalist class design doesn’t work.

I still estimate this will take at least a year for them to finally come to grips with why the class design doesn’t work and actually works in the opposite direction as the rest of the game and the way other classes are balanced.

These sound like great ideas and I’m sure with Arena Net’s long standing history of taking player ideas and implementing them we will see them in game shortly!

The key problems with the Elementalist really becomes apparent in the end game.

For example because they have the lowest HP pool, you will need to gear for Vitality on top of the standard Toughness every class has to gear for. This is compared to your Mesmer who has enough base HP (15000) to not need to worry about Vitality. You don’t really notice that till you starting to decide what gear choices you make for your Ele to get “proper” stats (2000 AP, 45% crit, 75% crit dmg, 1600 Tough, 15000+ HP).

On a whole for PvE DPS, you won’t really notice your DPS lacking because no one has a damage meter. You have a lot of theoretical DPS people who run theoretical DPS number crunchers but fact is if you’re crushing it or slacking you’ll never really be able to tell. Theoretical DPS ignores things such as boss mechanics and DPS downtime (such as when you have to move or stop DPS for whatever various reasons) and won’t ever be 100% accurate without actual in game meters. As I said once and stand by, you could wave your arms around like a maniac and look busy yet being doing no DPS and people don’t care. I’ve never been kicked from a group for low DPS in the last year.

The one area Elementalists excel is in WvW group fighting. While various other classes can bring our advantages to the table there’s no single class that can bring it all in one tidy package. This, more than anything, is why I keep playing my Elementalist. Elementalists are in many ways the backbone of any group force providing a large number of fields to blow up for AOE boons (Swiftness, Might) and AOE Healing.

LordByron.8369:

So they are buffing conjured so finally elementalist lose his class identity completely.

In the meantime PvE and WWW ele changed from the most fun and dynamic class to play to a gameplay inferior to a ranger pet (no more than 2-3 skills to be effective)

I still wait them to think to the 99% players that have their profession almost deleted from the game (expecially if you actually play for fun and not for rewards only).

Well first of all I was just making a joke about the Kubler-Ross model.

Second of all I’m feeling lazy so I’m just going to requote myself below why they do what they do:

Kodiak.3281:

Vissarion.6509:

Why do they bother with conjures.

Because if you haven’t figured it out by now Arena Net does all their balancing and all their game play changes based entirely on in game metrics.

So lets say there were a grand total of around million hours played on the Elementalist for all characters of all levels over the course of 60 days. Of those million hours, only 5% of the time X skill was actively slotted or Y trait was selected. They can break it down even further and look at what level ranges the skill was used in (such as maybe 4% of that time was 1-40 but after 40 it only saw 1% usage) and other interesting metrics.

Once that have that data they they can then do trending on that data (this is very common for any user based software development) to determine if anything needs to be taken care of looked at.

Their first passes probably lead them to the conclusion that the Cantrip utilities were too strong which eclipsed these other utilities. However even after nerfing Cantrips by removing their stunbreakers and other various nerfs over time Cantrips are likely still dominating the usage. Anyone who actually plays an Elementalist knows this is because Cantrips provide the maximum amount of utility/survivability on a class that already has the lowest HP and lowest armor (significantly) and you won’t see much deviation out of them until they address the lowest HP and lowest armor.

Since that failed miserably (non cantrip builds are still pretty rare) and people still aren’t using Conjures they probably think that by boosting Conjures up that it might drive usage instead. Result is Conjures get a boost to drive usage

The TL;DR here is that all the forum whining is pointless. Users (us) lie and while we might be crying one thing on the forums we’re doing another actual thing in game. I laugh at all the RTL crying because those people are still probably spamming it on cool down driving usage making them think it’s 100% okay. Unfortunately they seem content to keep putting band aids on our broken arm hoping that it’ll accomplish something.

Arena Net is now in the bargaining phase with Elementalists.

1. First they Denied there was a problem at all with Elementalists and it was normal for everyone to play the same spec. They said D/D was balanced and they were just waiting to see if the meta would adjust. For a long time they never nerfed anything even as people raged loudly about the Elementalist class being too strong.

2. Then they got Angry with the Elementalists always playing the same spec and decided to nerf everything. They nerfed the healing efficiency in SPVP as well as gutted our mobility with Ride the Lightning and took out all the stun removers out of Cantrips. Damage got lowered, boon generation got nerfed and on a whole we ended up in the sad state we are in now.

3. Now they are Bargaining with Elementalists to try to get them to play less used specs. They buffed the Earth line hoping it’d inspire some kind of condition/signet play. They now buffing Conjures hoping it’ll get people to spec out of Cantrips/Arcane abilities. They’re trying to nudge staff to get people to use it instead of S/D or D/D.

4. Next we will see a long bout of Depression in regards to the Elementalists and we’ll largely be ignored. We’ll still be nerfed and inferior to other classes in every role because jack of all trades and master of none is easily replaced by rolling 3 alts and being the master of all (or just make a warrior). Their changes won’t inspire anyone to change out of the existing x/x/x/20/20 cantrip meta and they won’t know what to do.

5. Finally years down the line there will be Acceptance that the Elementalist class design is bad at it’s core because it’s the very core of the Elementalist that encourages the very problem they were trying to fix of getting people to play different builds/strategies. They will overhaul the class and people will dust off their Elementalists that they long gave up on.

Of all the problems the Elementalist class has this is definitely #1 priority.

They should get right on this.

roostapro.9827:

however, having none to very little interaction depletes morale thus causing QQ threads/whine threads and all of the doom and gloom posts and in turn no ideas will be posted leaving the developers empty handed and all out of ideas themselves > this then leaves the player feeling “lost” and “left out” causing them to QQ and go other sections asking for things etc.
this is the main cause of certain areas being full of low morale.

The developers do not require us to have ideas and any assumption on your (or anyone else’s) part that we are required in any way, shape, or form is largely delusional.

They don’t interact because no good will come out of it. None of our ideas are required. All they can do is alienate people by telling them their ideas won’t happen or make “promises” (IE: Ideas they say might happen but players will take as definitely 100% going to happen) that they are now beholden to fulfill or again alienate people.

All they require of you is to buy the game (check) and spend money on gems or buy gems with gold fueling high gem prices to incentive others to spend money on gems.

Again nothing bitter, cynical or personal these are just the facts of the matter.

Daecollo.9578:

All I see is doom and gloom, no ideas to actually make the class better. Just a lot of elementalist going to other forums and asking others to be toned down dramatically, not wanting to change your ways at all.

I see almost no cool ideas at all without asking for too much or making the class even more complicated, I would love to see new ideas with risks and such.

Make one attunement better, lock out the use of two attunements. I think traits like this would make the elementalist more easy to play and fun.

Right now it feels like Elems want all there skills buffed, but don’t realize that you have to have a double edged axe for your skills. If you buff fire you should be blocked out of using water. You have to have traits like this to balance yourself to other classes.

All I really read now is Doom/Gloom and Why is X class better then me. Well right now your pretty much a red mage, you shouldn’t be good at everything if you have everything. Make traits that improve but give up attunements and you would be golden!

This is how things work.

Users lie. Users come up with bad ideas that they think are great ideas. Users often times don’t know what’s really good for them.

Everything they want to know about what their users are doing is recorded and tracked. How many times was each Elementalist skill slotted? How many times was it used? What weapons sets are being used? How often are we dying? How often are each of these things used out of combat? In combat? It’s a world of metrics and everything you do or don’t do contributes to those metrics. Metrics are very real and do not lie. They also provide a good solid basis of what they might consider problems and sometimes provide clear lines to solve them.

All the whining on these forums is a colossal waste of time. Long diatribes on how XYZ are why the Elementalist is bad when they can look at the numbers and see XYZ isn’t a problem accomplishes nothing. You don’t have the data to back up your complaints and they do.

All the idea posts on these forums are a colossal waste of time. All the hours spent writing novels about how you figured out the best way to fix Conjures and if they did it they would be the best thing ever is 100% wasted. The only thing they are going to look at when making changes is what skills are being used and what aren’t being used and make their own decisions on how to improve the things not being used.

This isn’t doom and gloom. It’s just the facts.

It’s a pretty easy design decision:

If the ground targeted ability has auto cast toggled on then it will default to a non ground targeted version of the ability and automatically throw the grenade center targeted onto your currently selected target.

This:

1. Preserves the ground targeting ability for these abilities if still desired.
2. Gives people who want a small break from it a small break on their spam ability being able to auto target.

I mean after 8+ hours of Grenadier a day for a few days it was enough for me to call it quits on the Engineer which is a shame because I really, really liked it. However the hand contortion required to spam 1 (even with auto ground targeting) while kiting at the same time mashing 11111111111111111111 for 8 hours is no good.

—> Error Logs <—
C failure on arena(Character) category(Composite Packfile) size(101528) whiteBox(false). Evicting unused model files and attempting again
TRY_ALLOC failure on arena(Character) category(Composite Packfile) size(123248) whiteBox(false). Evicting unused model files and attempting again
TRY_ALLOC failure on arena(Character) category(Composite Packfile) size(87356) whiteBox(false). Evicting unused model files and attempting again
TRY_ALLOC failure on arena(Character) category(Character Packfile) size(205720) whiteBox(false). Evicting unused model files and attempting again
TRY_ALLOC failure on arena(Character) category(Character Packfile) size(112352) whiteBox(false). Evicting unused model files and attempting again
TRY_ALLOC failure on arena(Character) category(Composite Packfile) size(80216) whiteBox(false). Evicting unused model files and attempting again
TRY_ALLOC failure on arena(Character) category(Composite Packfile) size(123336) whiteBox(false). Evicting unused model files and attempting again
TRY_ALLOC failure on arena(Character) category(Composite Packfile) size(82692) whiteBox(false). Evicting unused model files and attempting again
TRY_ALLOC failure on arena(Character) category(Composite Packfile) size(78776) whiteBox(false). Evicting unused model files and attempting again
TRY_ALLOC failure on arena(Character) category(Composite Packfile) size(88312) whiteBox(false). Evicting unused model files and attempting again
TRY_ALLOC failure on arena(Character) category(Composite Packfile) size(100208) whiteBox(false). Evicting unused model files and attempting again
TRY_ALLOC failure on arena(Character) category(Composite Packfile) size(90724) whiteBox(false). Evicting unused model files and attempting again
TRY_ALLOC failure on arena(Character) category(Composite Packfile) size(108356) whiteBox(false). Evicting unused model files and attempting again
TRY_ALLOC failure on arena(Animation) category(Anim Import Packfile) size(2192324) whiteBox(false). Evicting unused model files and attempting again

—> DirectX Device Info <—
VendorId = 0×10de
DeviceId = 0×1180
Version = 9.18.0013.2049
Description = NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680
Compat = 0×00100800
VidMem = 4042 MB

—> Code <—
006D0A94 e80787ff ff8b4d14 8b95ecfe ffff83c4 ……M………
006D0AA4 286a0051 528d95fc feffffb9 05000000 (j.QR………..
006D0AB4 e8e70201 008b4dfc 5f5e33cd 5be8933b ……M._^3.[..;
006D0AC4 27008be5 5dc21400 cccccccc 558bec8b ’…]…….U…
006D0AD4 45086a00 50e892fd ffff5dc2 0400cccc E.j.P…..]…..
006D0AE4 cccccccc cccccccc cccccccc 8b0d3497 …………..4.

—> Stack <—
3B9AFBA8 006d0ab9 014608ac 0000044d 00000000 ..m…F.M…….
3B9AFBB8 00000068 00000000 002173c4 00000000 h……..s!…..
3B9AFBC8 00000000 09f9a4d7 016e92f8 00000000 ……….n…..
3B9AFBD8 0a477ee0 014608ac 00000000 012d969c .~G…F…….-.
3B9AFBE8 013827c0 6e657261 6e413d61 74616d69 .‘8.arena=Animat
3B9AFBF8 2c6e6f69 74616320 696e413d 6d49206d ion, cat=Anim Im
3B9AFC08 74726f70 63615020 6c69666b 61202c65 port Packfile, a
3B9AFC18 636f6c6c 65747942 31323d73 32333239 llocBytes=219232
3B9AFC28 61202c34 616e6572 65747942 37313d73 4, arenaBytes=17
3B9AFC38 37353432 2c363936 6c616620 6361626c 2457696, fallbac
3B9AFC48 7479426b 313d7365 35333736 37303635 kBytes=167355607
3B9AFC58 6c61202c 3d6e6769 01002030 006d2737 , align=0 ..7’m.
3B9AFC68 3b9afd08 00000000 00000000 3b9afc80 …;………..;
3B9AFC78 006d2ab8 016e949c 3b9afc9c 006d2e61 .*m…n….;a.m.
3B9AFC88 00000110 00000100 00000003 00000000 …………….
3B9AFC98 002173e0 3b9afca8 3b9afcc0 006d88eb .s!….;…;..m.
3B9AFCA8 01c60000 00000000 002173d4 00000068 ………s!.h…
3B9AFCB8 00000001 002173c4 3b9afce4 006d8964 …..s!….;d.m.
3B9AFCC8 002173c4 00000000 00000000 014608ac .s!………..F.
3B9AFCD8 0000044d 00000068 00000001 3b9afd10 M…h……….;
3B9AFCE8 006d25c8 4b3d6620 3b9afd10 006d25ed .%m. f=K…;.%m.
3B9AFCF8 00000000 00000068 014608ac 0000044d ….h…..F.M…
3B9AFD08 00000000 002173c4 3b9afd48 006d2729 …..s!.H..;)‘m.
3B9AFD18 0000000a 00000000 00000000 014608ac …………..F.
3B9AFD28 0000044d 3b9afd58 3b9afd5c 2d6f1550 M…X..;\..;P.o-
3B9AFD38 2d6f1510 2d6f15f0 016e9c60 0000000a ..o-..o-`.n…..
3B9AFD48 3b9afd7c 0088cd99 00000000 00000000 |..;…………
3B9AFD58 016e92f8 00000000 00000068 00000000 ..n…..h…….
3B9AFD68 a27b4e62 00000000 2d6f1510 a27b4e62 bN{…….o-bN{.
3B9AFD78 002173c4 3b9afd90 0088fbf0 00000000 .s!….;……..
3B9AFD88 055fae50 2d6f1510 3b9afdc0 0088fe32 P._…o-…;2…
3B9AFD98 00000000 03e098b0 00000051 00000051 ……..Q…Q…
3B9AFDA8 00000008 01ceb10f a27b4e62 01ceb10f ……..bN{…..
3B9AFDB8 00000000 2375d3f0 3b9afe10 00875c66 ……u#…;f\..
3B9AFDC8 00000000 3b9afde4 006d77d7 05ea45e8 …….;.wm..E..
3B9AFDD8 00765b6e 0c404d70 00000020 3b9afe18 n[v.pM@. ……;
3B9AFDE8 00765c4f 0c404d70 00000020 012df088 O\v.pM@. …..-.
3B9AFDF8 047bcaa8 0072484e 00000011 00722b3d ..{.NHr…..=+r.
3B9AFE08 03e098b0 00000008 3b9afe38 00412e1b ……..8..;..A.
3B9AFE18 3da5e354 3da7e88e 071d7b4c 3b9afe74 T..=…=L{..t..;
3B9AFE28 0000000c 3da7e88e 3da5e354 3da5e354 …….=T..=T..=
3B9AFE38 3b9afe80 00416a0f 3da7e88e 00b46d1f …;.jA….=.m..
3B9AFE48 03e0a908 03e0a4e0 00000001 00000002 …………….
3B9AFE58 00000002 00000008 3b9afe7c 03e0a908 ……..|..;….
3B9AFE68 00000001 03e0a804 00000000 071d7b4c …………L{..
3B9AFE78 03e0a52d 00000000 3b9afeec 00b4311f -……….;.1..
3B9AFE88 03e0a4e0 03e0a534 071d7b40 00000008 ….4…@{……
3B9AFE98 3b9afec0 03e0a908 00000001 03706120 …;…….. ap.
3B9AFEA8 00000000 759d3bf4 4b3cd9c3 00000001 …..;.u..<K….
3B9AFEB8 4507ef3b 0000001e 00000051 00000000 ;..E….Q…….
3B9AFEC8 00000000 00000001 03706120 02554158 …….. ap.XAU.
3B9AFED8 00000001 7041270c 1a3fbefb 0000003d …..’Ap..?.=…
3B9AFEE8 4b3d643c 3b9aff24 00b43479 4b3d65f4 <d=K$..;y4…e=K
3B9AFEF8 00000001 02554158 03706120 00000001 ….XAU. ap…..
3B9AFF08 03706120 3b9afef4 00000001 3b9aff6c ap….;….l..;
3B9AFF18 00947380 71c2e6f8 00000000 3b9aff44 .s…..q….D..;
3B9AFF28 00b4354f 00000000 04011b40 006daf1f O5…….....m. 3B9AFF38 00000000 03706120 00000000 3b9aff7c .... ap.....|..; 3B9AFF48 0094721d 04011b40 4b3d65ac 00000000 .r..….e=K….
3B9AFF58 03706120 03706120 3b9aff50 3b9aff50 ap. ap.P..;P..;
3B9AFF68 3b9affc4 3b9affc4 00947380 71c2fc70 …;…;.s..p..q
3B9AFF78 00000000 3b9aff88 009472c5 00000000 …….;.r……
3B9AFF88 3b9aff94 7586336a 03706120 3b9affd4 …;j3.u ap….;
3B9AFF98 77c29f72 03706120 4c910f11 00000000 r..w ap….L….

(continued again…)

Ever since the Scarlet Patch I’ve had a number of times where I will end up crashing. The error is the same every time. I’ve updated my video drivers and all the other drivers I can think of. Extremely frustrating because I usually can’t get back into an event/area after crashing.

Any thoughts or ideas or fixes on Arena Net’s end would be appreciated.

—> Crash <—
Out of Memory: arena=Animation, cat=Anim Import Packfile, allocBytes=2192324, arenaBytes=172457696, fallbackBytes=167355607, align=0 ,
App: Gw2.exe
Pid: 3496
Cmdline:
BaseAddr: 00400000
ProgramId: 101
Build: 23458
When: 2013-09-14T05:59:54Z 2013-09-14T00:59:54-05:00
Uptime: 0 days 7:17:23
Flags: 0

—> System <—
Name: REMOVED
IpAddr: REMOVED
Processors: 8 [GenuineIntel:6:10:9]
OSVersion: Windows 6.1 (64 bit)

—> System Memory <—
Physical: 2609MB/ 8152MB 32%
Paged: 9542MB/16302MB 58%
Virtual: 195MB/ 4095MB 4%
Load: 67%
CommitTotal: 6760MB
CommitLimit: 16302MB
CommitPeak: 6813MB
SystemCache: 3221MB
HandleCount: 23929
ProcessCount: 61
ThreadCount: 907

—> Process Memory <—
Private: 3154MB
WorkingSet: 3126MB
PeakWorkingSet: 3140MB
PageFaults: 81248882

[DbgHelp.dll is C:\Windows\system32\dbghelp.dll]
[DbgHelp.dll version 6.1.7601.17514 (64/32-bit compatible)]

—> ClientContextThreadProc Thread 0×6b4 <—

—> Trace <—
Pc:006d0ab4 Fr:3b9afcf0 Rt:006d25ed Arg:00000000 00000068 014608ac 0000044d
Pc:006d25ed Fr:3b9afd10 Rt:006d2729 Arg:0000000a 00000000 00000000 014608ac
Pc:006d2729 Fr:3b9afd48 Rt:0088cd99 Arg:00000000 00000000 016e92f8 00000000
Pc:0088cd99 Fr:3b9afd7c Rt:0088fbf0 Arg:00000000 055fae50 2d6f1510 3b9afdc0
Pc:0088fbf0 Fr:3b9afd90 Rt:0088fe32 Arg:00000000 03e098b0 00000051 00000051
Pc:0088fe32 Fr:3b9afdc0 Rt:00875c66 Arg:00000000 3b9afde4 006d77d7 05ea45e8
Pc:00875c66 Fr:3b9afe10 Rt:00412e1b Arg:3da5e354 3da7e88e 071d7b4c 3b9afe74
Pc:00412e1b Fr:3b9afe38 Rt:00416a0f Arg:3da7e88e 00b46d1f 03e0a908 03e0a4e0
Pc:00416a0f Fr:3b9afe80 Rt:00b4311f Arg:03e0a4e0 03e0a534 071d7b40 00000008
Pc:00b4311f Fr:3b9afeec Rt:00b43479 Arg:4b3d65f4 00000001 02554158 03706120
Pc:00b43479 Fr:3b9aff24 Rt:00b4354f Arg:00000000 04011b40 006daf1f 00000000
Pc:00b4354f Fr:3b9aff44 Rt:0094721d Arg:04011b40 4b3d65ac 00000000 03706120
Pc:0094721d Fr:3b9aff7c Rt:009472c5 Arg:00000000 3b9aff94 7586336a 03706120
Pc:009472c5 Fr:3b9aff88 Rt:7586336a Arg:03706120 3b9affd4 77c29f72 03706120
Pc:7586336a Fr:3b9aff94 Rt:77c29f72 Arg:03706120 4c910f11 00000000 00000000
Pc:77c29f72 Fr:3b9affd4 Rt:77c29f45 Arg:00947243 03706120 00000000 00000000
Pc:77c29f45 Fr:3b9affec Rt:00000000 Arg:00947243 03706120 00000000 00905a4d

—> Thread registers <—
eax=3b9af794 ebx=00000000 ecx=014608ac edx=00000000 esi=75865846 edi=00000005
eip=006d0ab4 esp=3b9afba8 ebp=3b9afcf0
cs=0023 ss=002b ds=002b es=002b fs=0053 gs=002b efl=00200246

eax-32 3B9AF774 3b9af85c 00dcac7c 00000024 3b9afa70
eax-16 3B9AF784 3b9afaf0 3b9af7e4 759cc41f 3b9af794
eax 0 3B9AF794 80000003 00000000 00000000 759cc41f
eax16 3B9AF7A4 00000000 00afc0a1 0f8c371d c1a756ee
eax+32 3B9AF7B4 c1490f8c c0679d99 48c9d664 38ccb760
eax+48 3B9AF7C4 00000566 00000566 0f8c3702 3b9af85a
ecx-32 0146088C 00889f00 0088a9f0 008895d0 0088a470
ecx-16 0146089C 69665f73 614d656c 6567616e 00000072
ecx 0 014608AC 2e5c2e2e 2e2e5c2e 676e455c 5c656e69
ecx16 014608BC 65646f4d 6f4d5c6c 466c6564 2e656c69
ecx+32 014608CC 00707063 006f004d 00650064 0046006c
ecx+48 014608DC 006c0069 003a0065 0050003a 006f0072
esi-32 75865824 0239e6e9 90909000 ff8b9090 5dec8b55
esi-16 75865834 909005eb ff909090 860b9825 90909075
esi 0 75865844 ff8b9090 5dec8b55 909005eb ff909090
esi16 75865854 860da425 90909075 ff8b9090 6aec8b55
esi+32 75865864 10458d00 1075ff50 ff0c75ff fce80875
esi+48 75865874 85ffffe5 8b0774c0 c25d1045 c883000c

(continued below)

It’s really simple. It comes down to two things:

1. A lack of survivability. We should have the same base HP as Mesmer/Ranger (15k). There aren’t enough justifiable reasons as a class why we have 11k HP. It creates huge problems with gear selection, trait selection and utility selection.

2. 4 weapon sets. Sorry, but having access to four weapon sets creates more problems for us balance wise than we benefit from it. Just the base fact that we can’t swap from melee to ranged (full ranged) attacks with an attunement/weapon like nearly every other class in the game is terrible design.

Neither of these things will be changed or addressed any time soon. What they will do instead is continue to side step the problems and hope that changing other aspects will unravel the problem. We see this with things like them trying to boost Conjures which have low usage in order to drive usage which will get people to stop using Cantrips.

Basically they’re aiming for minimum changes for maximum results. Instead they’re getting what any sane person would expect, minimum changes for minimum results.

These are all great ideas and I’m sure with Arena Net’s long standing history of taking player ideas and suggestions for skill changes I’m sure we’ll see these next patch.

Vissarion.6509:

Why do they bother with conjures.

Because if you haven’t figured it out by now Arena Net does all their balancing and all their game play changes based entirely on in game metrics.

So lets say there were a grand total of around million hours played on the Elementalist for all characters of all levels over the course of 60 days. Of those million hours, only 5% of the time X skill was actively slotted or Y trait was selected. They can break it down even further and look at what level ranges the skill was used in (such as maybe 4% of that time was 1-40 but after 40 it only saw 1% usage) and other interesting metrics.

Once that have that data they they can then do trending on that data (this is very common for any user based software development) to determine if anything needs to be taken care of looked at.

Their first passes probably lead them to the conclusion that the Cantrip utilities were too strong which eclipsed these other utilities. However even after nerfing Cantrips by removing their stunbreakers and other various nerfs over time Cantrips are likely still dominating the usage. Anyone who actually plays an Elementalist knows this is because Cantrips provide the maximum amount of utility/survivability on a class that already has the lowest HP and lowest armor (significantly) and you won’t see much deviation out of them until they address the lowest HP and lowest armor.

Since that failed miserably (non cantrip builds are still pretty rare) and people still aren’t using Conjures they probably think that by boosting Conjures up that it might drive usage instead. Result is Conjures get a boost to drive usage

The TL;DR here is that all the forum whining is pointless. Users (us) lie and while we might be crying one thing on the forums we’re doing another actual thing in game. I laugh at all the RTL crying because those people are still probably spamming it on cool down driving usage making them think it’s 100% okay. Unfortunately they seem content to keep putting band aids on our broken arm hoping that it’ll accomplish something.

Release went with Necromancer. Was underwhelmed by lack of mobility in WvW and general WvW performance since it had basically zero killing power back then.

Rerolled an Engineer. Grenadier had it’s high moments and during those highs you felt unstoppable but they were pretty rare and the projectiles were super easy to avoid if someone knew you were there and kept mobile.

Tried an Ele but it just seemed terrible so went with Mesmer instead. Rode the Phantasm Mesmer high for a few months before they nerfed the crap out of Phantasms and made them require direct LOS (which caused all sorts of issues with little hills) and it was just awful for a while.

Went back to Ele and made it work with S/D for leveling then Lightning Hammer.

Someone on forums was saying Eles useless and Guardians are 10x the support so I made an 80 Guardian to test it and wasn’t very impressed. It was roughly the same only with no ranged options like the Ele. Ended up deleting it because it was incredibly boring to play.

Asura Ele got on my nerves after a while (animations are just too over the top) and I deleted him and remade into a Human Ele. I also deleted my Necro to take his name. So re-leveled another Ele and this time there were zero issues.

After all the Ele nerfs I caved in and made a Warrior because they seem to be pretty much this game’s golden class for PvE. Also I prefer the idea of an Axe/Hammer warrior over D/D for WvW.

I also finally remade my Mesmer into a Charr and deleted the Human Mesmer. Really prefer the animations and it looks cool as hell.

Also took my 1 year Anniversary scroll gift and made a 20 Necro again because why not. Guardian seems redundant with support Ele for WvW and I have zero interest in Thief/Ranger. Figure I might as well level him gathering since there’s a crapload of lower level mats that are selling for fortunes on the Tradepost atm.