Guild Wars 2

Shaogin.2679:

He’s been playing for over a year, it’s a troll thread, please stop guys.

Better safe than sorry

Shaogin.2679:

Sure, Anet MMM isn’t the best, but your examples here are the player base’s fault, not Anet’s. If one team was insanely more skilled….sure. But class distribution, well everyone should stop playing the same class. ;P

Please stop acting like there are only 10 people in the queue. There might be lots rangers and thieves, but there are also lots of other professions. While it might be a bit on the players’ side, this is a wonderful example of matchmaking failing again.

I understand why it might be frustrating to fight these classes if you’re new. When I started playing pvp, mesmers were the biggest problem for me no matter how strong the class was. Necros can seem a bit scary because of their ‘’two hp bars’, I do get that. However, I don’t think these two classes are necessarily overpowered. Even though power necros could use a bit less procs, but that’s for another thread. Anyways, maybe you should think about your build a bit, you didn’t state what you play, so it’s difficult to say.

I don’t want to say that it’s you fault, but I think you should try to maybe learn the classes a bit better, it helps to learn to fight them, too. Anyways, if you want any tips or advice, you can pm me.

LucosTheDutch.4819:

This is the reason why I stopped playing thief.

I’m still annoyed though when I’m teamed up with more than 1 ranger or 1 thief.

Rangers are usually pretty useless though they have their niche if they’re played well. Most rangers aren’t playing well though, they just camp on a ledge and pew-pew instead of actually trying to cap or decap points, which I don’t mind if there is just 1 ranger doing that, but when you have 2 or more it’s gonna make you lose the match.

Thieves can be incredibly useful if played well and again, you guessed it, most thieves don’t play their class well. So often I see thieves being hell-bend on capping far, even when they’re being steamrolled over and over again and never manage to decap far, nevermind actually cap it and they just keep going at far like a stubborn fool, even after I ask them in team-chat to leave far alone and help at mid.
Again, if it’s just 1 thief doing this it’s manageable, but when you have 2 or more thieves on your team just staggering far and getting themselves killed one by one it’s gonna make you lose the match.

To most ranger and thief players out there: Please, for the love of Dwayna, get your act together and learn how to play this game.

I agree with you. I don’t really mind having two thieves, but if you only have thieves and rangers, it’s an issue. Two thieves can be pretty cool if rest of your team is support oriented. But playing with rangers is just painful for me. It has been a million times I saw a ranger running into 3 people while I’m trying to ress in sr, or just standing on a ledge not bothering to press f. I don’t understand why this happens mostly with rangers but it does.

You sometimes meet good ones but bad experience prevails. I think it also has a lot to do with matchmaking, which doesn’t really work properly. I recently started playing thief, so I’m not that experienced on the class and don’t know if the class MMR’s are in the game, but the games are not balanced not only from the class point of view.

I understand why people are attracted to thief as a profession, but you have a point. Many thieves you meet cannot really fulfill the role they should. It’s a general knowledge but also class experience.

I agree with you in most points, but not with Aquatic benevolence being a minor trait in water. Since they moved damage modifiers to water and removed the ones in air, I don’t think it’s really fair dps ele should be stuck with AB. I understand it good for dd ele, but if fresh air will be forced to take water and have one useless minor gm trait, it will be hurt even more than it is now.

But you definitely are right. What they did to ele wasn’t fair compared to buffs to other professions. Maybe they will listen to you, Eternya.

…the great games I’ve had today. I’ve played exactly 3 games so far and all of them were fulfilled with so much learning experience. I’m astonished and want more. Please give me more games like this.

Despite my greatest efforts to avoid fire + air striking 2 million times per picosecond, we got destroyed both games. I guess it didn’t help one of our thieves left because he thought the comps were horrible. How could he even think that?!! But that’s okay, because it was so much fun and I’ve learnt so much! The matchmaking works so wonderfully, I think I’ll go play at least 100 games more today.

It isn’t.

However, if you were in practice mode, it could have been. Sometimes people choose empty servers to duel if they do not have their own arena. If that was the case, I would understand why they’re upset.

This is a pointless thread really. It’s not like IP is too weak. Stop complaining about a master and grandmaster trait can counter it.

Spinal shivers hit 2K? I’m constantly getting hit around 5K by spinal shivers, lol.

jcbroe.4329:

make it so critical procs cannot occur on autoattacks, or skills without cooldowns/initiative use.

That would actually make them unsuable and the whole set of sigils on crit would never be picked anymore. I’m not sure that’s the direction the game should be heading. Nerfing things so no one plays them anymore instead of trying to find a balance (except turret engis).

Nice video, however I disagree with some points there.

You’re saying people should switch when there is two or more of the same class/build. That’s not completely true. Having two shoutbows, two dd eles, one dd ele and one fresh air…etc. is not really a problem. Also having two mesmers against two or more necros is quite good if there is no or one thief on enemy team. Again, having two thievies it not always a problem. And in your first tip you’re saying people should play the class they’re good at, I agree. So telling them they should switch to something else is kinda contradicting. Not everyone can or want to multiclass.

I don’t like the ‘’1 close, 1 cross, rest mid’’ mentality. People should learn to adjust and create games that are not completely the same all the time. The game doesn’t force you to hold close and mid to win the game. There will be many situations when you will want to have a different strategy. Even your comp might force you to do so. If you have a squishy team on Legacy and will engage on mid, there is a quite high chance you’ll wipe eventually. However, going far with 2-3 players and taking the enemy players down will leave you with a better position on mid. It’s not black & white.

Saying someone should always stay close, eventually between close and mid, is not completely right either. It will make people think that there has to be one person sitting on close at all times. Players should keep an eye on it, but it should be situational, not like: ‘’Ok, you look after close the whole game.’’ It’s easier to do on Legacy and Kyhlo, but rest of the ranked maps might just lock players on that one point. It’s also useless to do so when enemy team has 5 players on mid/far. I’ve had this ele telling me that he has to camp close, because it would get decapped while we were losing a 4v5 fight at mid. They got mid and then runned over the ele on close. Also, if you’re not getting decapped, you might not want to bother and rather do more useful things somewhere else.

Also, saying not to stomp with 2 or more is wrong. There are many classes that has a single targed cc skill in their downstate and stomping with two is exactly what gives you the safe stomp. There are situations where you have to stomp in two and if you don’t, it’s a huge mistake. Obviously a thief trying to stomp when he’s getting focused is a bad idea, too.

I would also advise eles not to pre-cast their fgs and definitely not use it during a fight. The best time to use it is at exactly the moment you need the movement buff. By leaving a fgs on the ground and then using it during a fight, you might as well waste 180 sec cd.

Also, taking out a shoutbow instead of zerkers first might be beneficial, too.

Nope, zerker classes can stand on a point, sometimes it is needed and crucial to win a game.

Again, everything is situational. Sometimes you will need to do the things you said you shouldn’t. I would avoid words never/always and rather use usually/at most times, because players should keep an open mind and try to come up with different solutions. If someone tells them ‘’but you never…’, they won’t even think about it.

Winter.9861:

Treat others as you want to be treated.

In all honesty, that’s probably how it is at the moment.

Aerathnor.8305:

Laraley.7695:

Aerathnor.8305:

Well, the base attunement cd is dropping as well so arcana won’t be as necessary just to make our mechanic function properly. I’m thinking that Elemental Attunement will be the more popular choice personally as it synergizes with water better than evasive, but who knows?

We may be dropping Arcana entirely if tempest or even the updated Geomancers Defense give us enough survivability outside of the Arcana line :/

In all honesty, dd ele will just go earth, water and arcana. I don’t think anything will change there. I assume the elite spec will be dps oriented so nothing dd ele would take to be able to face the buffs mesmers and thieves recieved. Then again, dd ele will be shifting from a support sustained build to just a bunker build and that might push it out of meta.

Fresh air might not be viable at all because of the nerfs, who knows. The important part there is to know what will be the new specialization.

They said they might change lots of things still and that they’re thinking about some of the changesb if they’re good or not. Let’s hope they will figure out what they want to do is not really good for the game.

I’m not defending the decision at all, I think it’s stupid compared to the GM’s that are getting baked into mesmer especially. I don’t think D/D is an over performing build particularly and I’m confused about the motivation behind this change (other than to make arcana seem less “necessary”).

Just trying to throw out some hope that we’re getting something to compensate for losing one of our core traits.

At the moment it doesn’t seem like it. Geomancer’s defense could be good, but the problem is that it is indeed situational. Staff eles will get nothing to compensate. It’s also changing the way ele was played till now. DD is great at supporting allies and that’s why it’s a good pick for teams, the problem that they’re taking away that support. I don’t believe ele deserves such a nerf, especially when you look at the changes to other classes.

If their intention was indeed to nerf dd ele, they failed miserably by touching all other specs that are at least a bit viable in pvp. If their intention was to create a wider build diversity, they failed miserably again. Since eles have the lower base hp pool and armour, they will be forced to pick up the traits that will buff survability. That is accelerated by the fact eles will lose 220 vitality, which is a huge deal for a class that has a 10800 base hp. The protection and regeneration is indeed crucial for the class. So far we don’t know if there will be any compensation for the loss of boon duration, which could mean more problems for the supporter role dd ele tries to fulfull.

Seeing as they got rid of damage mutlipliers from air, fresh air won’t have a great time either. Without elemental attunement fresh air will have to spec more into survability because of other classes recieving huge buffs and losing these modifiers will mean the sustained dps will get hurt quite a lot. I’m not sure if fresh air will be able to compete with mesmers and thieves after the patch.

So far it seems they just made certain traits and tratlines completely unvaible and will be left unsued. I don’t like the direction ele is heading either. I’m not a fan of passive procs and the aura buffs seem really silly. If anything, I’m sure I won’t have fun playing that. Not even mentioning that you have to get hit to make a use of those auras and ele will again have to invest a lot in survability.

So, it rather seems like they either have this idea what ele should be, which is completely wrong and players themselves do not like the direction their class is heading or they indeed thought it’s time ele should be pushed out of meta in all aspects of the game.

GLOR.2489:

BlackBeard.2873:

I’d be happy if the cast-time was brought down to ~0.25s, with the same delay. As it is, you are punished heavily for casting it…

Please be serious with your answer because this post is for a realistic solution. If we applied your solution the “Dragon Tooth” will be to strong. Actually the skill is good, it does lot damage and cause burning but it cost a long time cast and a heavy animation. So the skill is balance. The problem is that this skill can’t be used in all situations (as for example the “Ice spike” in staff).

Hardly, with that delay and casting time anyone will at least two years reaction speed will walk out of it. It’s only useful for cleave on downed if they’re not stealthed.

Yeah, it should be a ground targeted skill. It should also have lower cast time and delay. And it should be on a weapon that doesn’t have so many bad skills, so they should rework the whole scepter.

But I don’t think we’re getting these changes. The buff to Shatterstone was a complete joke and they don’t seem to even know what to do to improve scepter.

Aerathnor.8305:

Well, the base attunement cd is dropping as well so arcana won’t be as necessary just to make our mechanic function properly. I’m thinking that Elemental Attunement will be the more popular choice personally as it synergizes with water better than evasive, but who knows?

We may be dropping Arcana entirely if tempest or even the updated Geomancers Defense give us enough survivability outside of the Arcana line :/

In all honesty, dd ele will just go earth, water and arcana. I don’t think anything will change there. I assume the elite spec will be dps oriented so nothing dd ele would take to be able to face the buffs mesmers and thieves recieved. Then again, dd ele will be shifting from a support sustained build to just a bunker build and that might push it out of meta.

Fresh air might not be viable at all because of the nerfs, who knows. The important part there is to know what will be the new specialization.

They said they might change lots of things still and that they’re thinking about some of the changesb if they’re good or not. Let’s hope they will figure out what they want to do is not really good for the game.

Teutos.8620:

Aidenwolf.5964:

we faced a full dragon squad.

Why does this point still show up everywhere when someone complains about bad match making?

The PvP rank has absolutely nothing to do with skill!

No, it does not. But 5 dragon ranks will have more experience than a team of 5 deer players. It’s still some indication of how the game will go.

Blair.3796:

Random per player would be more difficult to set up. Why not replace daily class with daily armor weight? Like “Daily Light Armor Winner” or “Daily Medium Armor Winner.” Then, for example, there may be still be an increase in thieves or rangers, but it won’t be ALL THIEVES or ALL RANGERS.

Pls no. That’s even worse. Having 5 light classes would be awful.

I think I’m done asking ANet nicely to fix stuff. It’s not really worth my or anyone’s time. Can’t even count how many times there have been people asking nicely to remove mid air immob bug, to remove profession dailies, stealth bugs, spawn bugs…these things are in game for months and months and all ANet says is ’’we’ll look into it’’. However, it’s not worth to rage on forums either.

ArrDee.2573:

Rangers, like turret Engis, aren’t really picked competitively but they ruin the casual PvP experience! Isn’t that the only thing that matters! Golly gee willikers Ranger daily day is the worst! How much longer must I endure the 1800 range pew pew pew! How much longer must I endure the overpowdered immob stacking elite that roots you in place until the end of time! Nerf plz! Nerf all classes until only Warrior and Elementalist remain!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

Yes, let’s have rangers and turret engis in competitive PvP, because that’s so much better than actually using your brain.

Also, elementalist is the class that is getting nerfs. Please, stop acting like they’re overbuffing it. You’re not crying about them not nerfing engi and you totally should, but hey as long as it’s you playing something that’s too strong, right?

Abazigal.3679:

Laraley.7695:

Yes, exactly. So if a team loses, people will blame always the guy with the lowest MMR even though it might not even be his fault. There is a reason why competitive games don’t show MMR to players and it’s the possibility of hostility.

Actually not. Right now, i had a match where all my team kept dropping like flies for no reason… I might not have complained at all if i knew these were beginners/less experienced.

However, i’m not fan of displaying the MMR itself, maybe simply putting the total number of tournament games played should be enough.

The fact you wouldn’t do it doesn’t mean that others wouldn’t either.

Yes, exactly. So if a team loses, people will blame always the guy with the lowest MMR even though it might not even be his fault. There is a reason why competitive games don’t show MMR to players and it’s the possibility of hostility.

Yeah, I don’t think that’s happening. It could bring more hostility to pvp games.

Jermoe Morrow.9501:

I feel like I have to tell the while story first.

So I was playing ranked Temple of the Silent Storm with my trap ranger, I capped middle then grabbed both ferocities in time to run back to defend mid. After that I pretty much stayed mid because I had a near constant flow of enemies trying to take it, with me jumping off during lulls on combat to get ferocity as it spawned for the extra points on kills. We won.

So as the game ended, one of the losers kept saying how it was the ranger daily, as if him having 2 rangers was why he lost. I commented I was a ranger, and having held mid for most of the game without a single death I could remember. That’s when I got flooded with messages saying how score doesn’t matter (I had highest ) and is probably proof that I’m garbage that doesn’t rotate enough.

My team seemed to be having no trouble taking other points, and certainly never asked for help. Should I have just let the enemy have mid? Should I have done something completely different? Or is everyone just salty because rangers?

Maybe your team was good enough to take care of the rest of the map themselves. However, as stated above, if there was a constant flow of enemies, you wouldn’t have time to cap ferocity. Normally, you don’t want to cap it anyway, it’s just a waste of time. The only time when it’s ok to do so is when you’re crushing the enemy team. The points from the buffs are not that significant in an even match and you’re letting your team 4v5 on the map. It was okay in that particular match, but everything is situational and camping one point/capping ferocity is not usually the good move.

Turk.5460:

Laraley.7695:

You actually didn’t understand what I said at all. I stated above that the point is not only know what you’re doing but also to master your class. I’m sorry but I don’t need to watch your gameplay to know people do not master the class after 60 hours of pvp. There is a difference between sort of knowing what’s happening and being a great player. And yes, there are great players being matched with ‘okay players who sort of know what they’re doing’ and that’s not okay. You act like you know everything and you’ve learnt all you could, that only points out how shallow you want your pvp experience to be.

You’re at it again! I said nothing of the sort. I said I was doing well. Which is true, I’m winning most of my games and having a great time. I know fully well I’m nowhere near mastering my profession.

The whole purpose of me joining this thread was because someone selfishly suggested a prerequisite to being able to queue for ranked. From what I’ve wrote, any halfwit can tell that I know well enough what I’m doing to be able to play in ranked. And even someone who “only sort of knows what to do” (a not-so-subtle and quite desperate sounding patronization) is very reasonable to assume they can start giving the ranked queue a try.

So thanks, you’ve basically proved my starting point for me.

And you still don’t understand the point I’ve been saying. I never said that there should be r80 requirement. I’ve been saying it’s not okay that bad, okay and great players are getting matched together.

Turk.5460:

Laraley.7695:

Also, the fact that you say playing a thief is pretty easy shows you haven’t mastered your class. Yes, it’s not hard to figure out what you should do roughly, but 99% you’re doing suboptimal plays because you do not have enough experience.

Where did I say it was easy? [sarcasm] And I’m glad you know for fact that my gameplay is not the greatest, a spectacular mind’s eye you must have, since I’ve never once used a streaming service. [/sarcasm] I don’t know what’s going on in your brain, but you’re arguing against points that haven’t been stated. Stop being insane and return to the conversation, please.

You previously said 60 hours (which I still stand by being a very nice chunk of experience, unless you’re an incredibly slow learner) wasn’t enough to know what you’re doing. And now you’re being a hypocrite by stating that it is enough time.

You haven’t given any actual argument since you joined the conversation, unless you count covering your ears and shouting “that’s not enough time to learn – that’s not enough time to learn – that’s not enough timelalalalalalala” You get the picture. Well, probably not. :\

You actually didn’t understand what I said at all. I stated above that the point is not only know what you’re doing but also to master your class. I’m sorry but I don’t need to watch your gameplay to know people do not master the class after 60 hours of pvp. There is a difference between sort of knowing what’s happening and being a great player. And yes, there are great players being matched with ‘okay players who sort of know what they’re doing’ and that’s not okay. You act like you know everything and you’ve learnt all you could, that only points out how shallow you want your pvp experience to be.

I’m not sure if adding more rewards is the step in the right direction. What pvp needs at the moment is proper matchmaking, the separation of solo and team players, functional leaderboards and sorting players by skill. We don’t need more players trying to farm rewards but rather more players interested in pvp experience in general. There are tons of things that needs to be done to improve the quality of life of pvpers, too. For example actually knowing how you stand, your MMR. To be able to do something between queues. To have the option to make a difference in your matches, not being completely dependent on luck and the players you’re with and/or against. As I do think that new rewards would be great, I can’t stress enough there are things that are needed to be fixed as soon as possible and those are not rewards. If we can’t have a healthy competitive pvp eviroment that offers the option to learn from your matches, then we might as well not get any rewards.

Turk.5460:

Laraley.7695:

I’m pretty sure someone could run through the records of the account and find it. I’ve experienced it, I don’t have to prove anything. Just the fact you back up your skill on having some kind of winrate shows you do not know what you’re doing.

Do you? Apparently you don’t understand how the ranking system works, considering I’m playing a thief well and climbing the ladder, slowly. +1’ing fights, decapping and running back to +1 some more. Rocket science!

Also – https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof – Yeah, if you want your earlier claim to be taken seriously, then yes, you do have something to prove…

No, apparently you do not know how the ranking system works. And the fact leaderboards means how many games you play, not how good you are. As long as solo and team q is mixed together and there is no funcional matchmaking a winrate from a short period of time is not an indicator of skill either. Yes, I’m sorry I didn’t take a screenshot, I didn’t know these days you have to prove every single thing. Why the hell would I lie about it? But just go on and think how experienced you are after 60 hours of pvp and think you should be matched with people who has been playing it for years.

Also, the fact that you say playing a thief is pretty easy shows you haven’t mastered your class. Yes, it’s not hard to figure out what you should do roughly, but 99% you’re doing suboptimal plays because you do not have enough experience.

Turk.5460:

Laraley.7695:

I don’t have to have any evidence because I’ve experienced it myself. I got a new account on eu during one of the sales and went straight to ranked queue having 0 games played before. The first game I had was against and with people who regulary appear in touries. So yes, it does happen.

181 wins/60 hours is hardly enough to learn to play properly. People on the leaderboards have more wins/gametime per season and they’re still not the greatest, are they? I’m not saying that more time generally means better skill, but don’t act like 30 hours of pvp is some great accomplishment. You might have some basic knowledge, but the point is also to learn to play your class properly. This could obviously be solved by having a functional matchmaking, but it doesn’t seem like we’re getting that.

No evidence, so basically it never happened. What do you have to backup your claim that 30 hours of PvP isn’t enough to properly learn how to play your profession? I have a 56% win rate in ranked right now, same as you seemed to be, with not a large gap in between games played. I’m pretty confident I know what I’m doing, are you?

I’m pretty sure someone could run through the records of the account and find it. I’ve experienced it, I don’t have to prove anything. Just the fact you back up your skill on having some kind of winrate shows you do not know what you’re doing.

Turk.5460:

Laraley.7695:

Turk.5460:

Wowzers, suggesting rank 80 is an awful idea!
Maybe rank 5 or 10, so someone gets the feel for the game-modes (which would require hotjoin to no longer give pvp xp)

I’m only rank 38, and that’s after hours and hours of games, I can only imagine how long it would take to get to rank 80. Or that the matchmaking queue would take hours!

You’re kidding right? You can almost get rank 5 after one win in ranked/unranked. That would basically solve nothing. Having a rank 38 is roughly 181 wins in ranked/unranked, how is that ‘’hours and hours of games’‘? Do you realize there are people with thousands and thousands wins in ranked queue getting matched with people who are in their first games. (That’s ‘’hours and hours of games’’ btw) How is that not flawed?

If that’s how it works, of course its flawed. Still not a reason to bar anyone from a game mode. I’m very skeptical about that, however, so if you can, please link hard evidence of someone with 1-20 skill points being matched with someone with 400 skill points in a solo q.

Also 181 wins is 30 hours. Accompanied by equal losses, yeah, that’s most definitely “hours and hours.” That’s a lot of game time, regardless of what some people who have way more free time might think. Its also way more time than necessary to learn how to effectively play conquest with one profession.

I don’t have to have any evidence because I’ve experienced it myself. I got a new account on eu during one of the sales and went straight to ranked queue having 0 games played before. The first game I had was against and with people who regulary appear in touries. So yes, it does happen.

181 wins/60 hours is hardly enough to learn to play properly. People on the leaderboards have more wins/gametime per season and they’re still not the greatest, are they? I’m not saying that more time generally means better skill, but don’t act like 30 hours of pvp is some great accomplishment. You might have some basic knowledge, but the point is also to learn to play your class properly. This could obviously be solved by having a functional matchmaking, but it doesn’t seem like we’re getting that.

Turk.5460:

Wowzers, suggesting rank 80 is an awful idea!
Maybe rank 5 or 10, so someone gets the feel for the game-modes (which would require hotjoin to no longer give pvp xp)

I’m only rank 38, and that’s after hours and hours of games, I can only imagine how long it would take to get to rank 80. Or that the matchmaking queue would take hours!

You’re kidding right? You can almost get rank 5 after one win in ranked/unranked. That would basically solve nothing. Having a rank 38 is roughly 181 wins in ranked/unranked, how is that ‘’hours and hours of games’‘? Do you realize there are people with thousands and thousands wins in ranked queue getting matched with people who are in their first games. (That’s ‘’hours and hours of games’’ btw) How is that not flawed?

Supreme.3164:

Laraley.7695:

Supreme.3164:

Laraley.7695:

Supreme.3164:

If you go 0/6/6/6/0 you’re not squishy at all and you still get the vigor from soothing disruption, if that still not enough..use energy sigil. If after all this you still think your build is too squishy, then it’s time to spend few weeks to train yourself, the trait set up is not squishy at all by my standards

Now that ele attunement base recharge has been dropped to 10s, there is nothing forcing you into arcana..only old habits

With a 10s recharge you could equip stone heart and make yourself immune to crit for as long as you stay in earth

Do you even know what fresh air means? Do you know that the spec doesn’t use soothing disruption? Do you realize you lose active defense if you don’t go arcana? And dps, too?

Do you realize: current fresh air mostly use cantrip reduction and the trait is being incorporated into soothing disruption?, that now you will max water line and hence take cleansing water most likely? That active defense of frequent dodging can be substituted by revamped earth line?

And do explain how going arcana increase dps of fresh air, now that everything has been removed

Main problem is that I even play 30 fire/air currently so I see things from a different perspective all together, I don’t see at all this loss of sustain on fresh air, if anything the sustain has greatly increased

Lol, I don’t know anyone playing fresh air and using Cantrip Mastery. I suppose some people play it, but they sacrifice dps for reduced cooldown on mistorm (?), which is not really that great. Do you even play ele? Do you know the traits in Arcana? You know you get free fury, weakness, might, protection, regeneration, retal and stuff? Doesn’t seem like it.

No you don’t know everybody and neither the class!, You only know what’s written in big capital letters on website and call it the only thing that work

You should not talk about DPS like you know what metric of measurement means, because current fresh air build listed on meta battle does 1/3 the dmg of a shatter mesmer and 1/2 the dmg of a d/p thief while having less sustain then both and far less sustain then med guardian.

If you’d be really interested in DPS then you’d be able to play a 30 fire/air ele which deal far greater dmg than anything in the current meta, problem is you don’t want to really play a DPS spec…‘cause you don’t even seem to know what DPS means

-edit- Pls do try to maintain consistency in your statement, to say that cantrip mastery over soothing wave reduce dps is complete non-sense, and where this huge dps buff come from in the arcana line when future fresh air will be able to access all attunements faster than current version?

Seeing as you don’t know what Arcana trait line has, you don’t know the class. Maybe you play too much of your pve build that will fail facing anyone who is decent.

You were the one generalizing how every ele plays your build and those who don’t definitely copied it from metabattle. Anyways, no point talking to you.

Supreme.3164:

Jekkt.6045:

you take soothing mist in water and cleansing wave, not soothing disruption. you have only one cantrip and even the reduced cd is not worth it if the trait doesn’t increase lf range to 1,2k.

Currently there is no reason whatsoever to take soothing wave on fresh air, because a 465s regen won’t magically increase your survivability if you can’t play zerker in the first place.

Soothing wave is still better than reduced cooldown on ONE cantrip. You can also take Vital Striking or just put two points in fire/earth. All of these are more useful than Cantrip mastery.

Supreme.3164:

Laraley.7695:

Supreme.3164:

If you go 0/6/6/6/0 you’re not squishy at all and you still get the vigor from soothing disruption, if that still not enough..use energy sigil. If after all this you still think your build is too squishy, then it’s time to spend few weeks to train yourself, the trait set up is not squishy at all by my standards

Now that ele attunement base recharge has been dropped to 10s, there is nothing forcing you into arcana..only old habits

With a 10s recharge you could equip stone heart and make yourself immune to crit for as long as you stay in earth

Do you even know what fresh air means? Do you know that the spec doesn’t use soothing disruption? Do you realize you lose active defense if you don’t go arcana? And dps, too?

Do you realize: current fresh air mostly use cantrip reduction and the trait is being incorporated into soothing disruption?, that now you will max water line and hence take cleansing water most likely? That active defense of frequent dodging can be substituted by revamped earth line?

And do explain how going arcana increase dps of fresh air, now that everything has been removed

Main problem is that I even play 30 fire/air currently so I see things from a different perspective all together, I don’t see at all this loss of sustain on fresh air, if anything the sustain has greatly increased

Lol, I don’t know anyone playing fresh air and using Cantrip Mastery. I suppose some people play it, but they sacrifice dps for reduced cooldown on mistorm (?), which is not really that great. Do you even play ele? Do you know the traits in Arcana? You know you get free fury, weakness, might, protection, regeneration, retal and stuff? Doesn’t seem like it.

Supreme.3164:

If you go 0/6/6/6/0 you’re not squishy at all and you still get the vigor from soothing disruption, if that still not enough..use energy sigil. If after all this you still think your build is too squishy, then it’s time to spend few weeks to train yourself, the trait set up is not squishy at all by my standards

Now that ele attunement base recharge has been dropped to 10s, there is nothing forcing you into arcana..only old habits

With a 10s recharge you could equip stone heart and make yourself immune to crit for as long as you stay in earth

Do you even know what fresh air means? Do you know that the spec doesn’t use soothing disruption? Do you realize you lose active defense if you don’t go arcana? And dps, too?

Supreme.3164:

To lose “perma” is vigor is not a problem at all….because it should have not be allowed in the first place.

Look I’m an ele main and I have been fighting my fair share of d/d eles who survive solely because of the trait set up, if you go tank you should be allowed to survive yes….but not survive indefinitely regardless of the number of mistakes you do.

Between 2 eles if one takes 5-6 burning speed in his face, the match should end already, it shouldn’t go one forever because the skill difference has already been established, one waste dodges because he can, the other save his dodges, the latter should be rewarded with victory

If this would be allowed then the would be no point for any player to try and attempt to improve himself.

I believe this is what Anet think also, reason why feline grace was nerfed, so unskilled thieves can’t survive by simply dodging ghosts

You know there are other specs besides dd ele. And those specs are squishy and need the vigor.

Grimreaper.5370:

BlackBeard.2873:

Grimreaper.5370:

I am excited about the changes Laraley, and I think you should be too. Don’t worry because in the end I believe everything will be alright, have faith.

Kind of like it was from summer of 2012 until 4/15/14? I think d/d with earth/water/arcana (ele contingency is suprisingly good with how tanky it is) and d/f auramancer (with air/earth/water) will be fine, but scepter and staff builds are going to be just bad or overshadowed by other classes.

My high-level traitline assessment:

Fire is bad outside of blindspam. Sunspot is a joke and flame barrier doesn’t work with lingering elements. Flame barrier might work as a minor for auramancer builds (but not really b/c they need to go into air for zephyr’s boon, earth for prot on aura, and water for cleanse). The adepts are honestly bad outside burning precision (and a chance on a chance with an ICD is not really good). Master level are “meh” in that they don’t really give great damage, utility, or survival. At GM only blindspam will work in pvp. Spellslinger is terrible, but I guess caters to pve casuals who will camp fire (although persisting flames is better for them anyway).

Air is more of a utility line, and has good potential in an aura-based build. However, all 3 grandmasters don’t really offer DIFFERENT choices. Lightning rod and bolt to the heart come down to which is higher dps, while fresh air is dps/utility. There are then actually just 2 choices: fresh air (if you want the utility) or whichever other one gives more damage.

Earth is carried by the OP -20% damage within 600 range trait. At adept only ele shielding is strong, while earth’s embrace MAY see spot usage in staff builds. Condition builds don’t work, so condition traits are dumb. Rock solid is decent, but not really good enough at only 1 stack (it was hard to justify when it was 2s unlimited stab). Geomancer’s training is amazingly strong and the only real choice. The grandmaster traits are good, except diamond skin is still terrible design.

Water line is very strong and going to be necessary in most builds. The aura trait outstrips stop,drop, and roll due to cleansing water. Piercing shards is a non-choice because water does terrible damage to begin with. At master, Soothing disruption is the clear choice for most builds b/c cantrips are the only option, while aquamancer’s training might see use in dps builds. Grandmaster is pretty good, but aura-share is worthless if it only applies to weapon skills.

Arcana is kind of a mess. Lingering elements seems pretty useless when the only ones worth lingering are water/earth (enforcing the earth/water/arcana bent). Arcane energy would be interesting if it gave 25 endurance (which is 5/6 of the bar) rather than 25%, but renewing stamina is the only real choice at adept. Master is decent with ele contingency for tanky builds (retal and prot are good), while arcane shield is decent but still bad on bursty builds. At grandmaster the only real choice is ele attunement 90% of the time (the class doesn’t work without it). Evasive arcana is a trap choice and is only really good in-conjunction with elemental attunement. Elemental surge is a joke (as always) unless there is some broken way to pop a bunch of arcanes for some stupid 1-shot.

The problem with putting evasive arcana and elemental attunement on the same line, is that they aren’t DIFFERENT playstyles, and it comes down to a min-max (which goes in Ele attunement’s favor). It seems that the goal is to take the “dodge’s blast” and give that engineers (and see how broken that is with healing turret). Most eles who enjoyed this playstyle with evasive arcana will just play engie.

This is some really great insight blackbeard, I do also agree that it is a shame that you have to max out air and fire if you want to take advantage of zypher’s boon with fire shields mainly for example. The arcana line does seem very underwhelming now, so hopefully some offensive builds will come into play and work well or something like 0/6/6/6/0.

In my opinion(Based on speculations) instead of having to take arcana and water line, we’ll now just have to take water and earth line if we want any survivability, we’ll have the option of either choosing fire, air or arcana, but then again who knows as of yet.

The problem is that if you don’t go to Arcana you lose the perma vigor, which is quite important.

Arken.3725:

Isn’t that the point? Having to choose between two strong traits instead of having access to everything? This is what diversity is all about.

Then they should make all classes to choose, thieves don’t for example. The traits are crucial to ele. I doubt it will bring more diversity, it will just kill one of the traits.

SobeSoul.6910:

Swim.6830:

Acandis.3250:

Air

Grandmaster

• These are fine.

Stopped reading here. Not sure what kind of kitten Ele you want to see…

What do you think is wrong with the Grandmasters. The Air line is nice now.

The air line is not any better than it used to be. Zephyr’s speed is basically worthless, with so much swifntess around you will rarely use its benefits. (Not that they changed it). Air training is gone. No one will use Bolt to the heart anymore. They nerfed the dps fresh air ele was able to get from Air line.

FrownyClown.8402:

Laraley.7695:

FrownyClown.8402:

here is a tip for you. Put more dps in your gear. Being able to invest so far into earth is a great tradeoff. Id choose it solely for geomancers defense.

Staff builds in wvw will probably be 06066.
D/D will probably be 06660 or 00666.
Sc/f will probably be 66060 or 06066.

The core functionality won’t change too much

Yeah, the the problem is that fresh air won’t be viable since other classes got major buffs and ele won’t be able to compete with them. So that leaves us with a dd ele viable, yikes. There is no gear in pvp, so your argument is invalid there. It hurts fresh air dps quite a lot. Also, you’ll have to pick a useless major trait in Arcana.

the amulet will provide more stats to compensate. I see fresh air eles picking up one with air again since its now 3s of superspeed. Just imagine less burst and more survivability from traits. Zerker will still hurt. Bolt to the heart is overrated. most players at less then 33% health are on the verge of dying anyways. So just think, you can get 3s of super speed to kite around and you can also get an extra heal from evasive arcana now. Blinding ashes was buffed if u choose that route and the defence from earth is op if you want to go that route as well. Our damage modifiers where nerfed, but our defensive abilities got buffed.

Erm what? A free heal from Evasive Arcana? You know, that half of the eles were already running 26006 or 06026? You basically can’t survive with just Evasive Arcana and go air and fire, it’s not possible. It would be less survability that it’s now. One with air is okay, but I still would prefer Bolt to the heart. Mesmers and thieves got giant buffs, fresh air ele won’t really be any close to it.

I feel like this was a bad move. Especially when they put damage traits into water. As a dps ele, I might want to take them, but that means I’ll be stuck with a useless GM minor trait. If it affected the ele itself, it wouldn’t be that bad, but that might be broken.

BATMAN.6794:

Why not just delete elemental contingency and move elemental attunement to that spot and find some crap trait to fill in for the missing grand master because we all know we are going to take evasive arcana over any final trait in that line?

Because since both EA’s are crucial for eles, they will have to choose. A great argument, right?

FrownyClown.8402:

here is a tip for you. Put more dps in your gear. Being able to invest so far into earth is a great tradeoff. Id choose it solely for geomancers defense.

Staff builds in wvw will probably be 06066.
D/D will probably be 06660 or 00666.
Sc/f will probably be 66060 or 06066.

The core functionality won’t change too much

Yeah, the the problem is that fresh air won’t be viable since other classes got major buffs and ele won’t be able to compete with them. So that leaves us with a dd ele viable, yikes. There is no gear in pvp, so your argument is invalid there. It hurts fresh air dps quite a lot. Also, you’ll have to pick a useless major trait in Arcana.

Well, I definitely don’t agree with Zephyr’s speed being good, it’s pretty worthless. I would like too see some change there, too.

Also, they did say that Soothing Ice will have lower duration.

Yeah, I agree, this is the most ridiculous change from yesterday’s stream.

Impact.2780:

Well.. Yes. These changes will enable full specialization of 3 trait lines. That means essentially 6/6/6 builds. 3 grandmaster traits.

So? That was not my question. My question was if you would pick fire, air and earth for fresh air.

Being tanky doesn’t mean you will be giving support to your allies, which is crucial for dd ele. Why would you take a point holder over shoutbow, which can do the same AND support allies?

Also, fresh air getting more survability and less dps is not the way to go. It will die to thieves and mesmers anyway.

Loboling.5293:

Laraley.7695:

leman.7682:

Gryph.8237:

Anet = bias. It is so clear which classes receive attention and what classes they laugh at. Gw2 has become a placeholder for me until another mmo comes out that lacks this juvenile bias. Terrible and unprofessional devs.

Unfortunately, I have to agree. Seeing Davis and Peters joke about necros and rangers on every possibility kind of show their professionalism or lack thereof.

And seeing as many things they stated were false, therefore not knowing the traits fully, makes me worried about the balance.

Don’t worry about those classes for this reason. They were making countless mistakes on every class I play. (Thief, Engie, Ranger, Ele) Not knowing what minor already exist, or what are the classes grandmaster traits… So don’t let it get to you. I just went over all this with my thief. Trying to make some good builds and found a bunch. Overall, the system is more restrictive. But for professions that lacked diversity (Thief, Ele) in viable builds I think this will be an improvement. I still have to try and make a few engineer builds (as I’m not interested in ranger gameplay anymore, but it looks like more of the same, endless theorycrafting for good builds which blow unaware players up in seconds). I have a feeling classes like engineer and ranger are going to see a reduction in builds. But I’m not certain yet, I’ve got to spend some time trying to make new and exciting builds and see how it works out.

Guards look OP (and will probably get some nerfs before the release), thieves look like more of the same, but with more interesting choices, ele look nerfed in what we know, but they are opening a few interesting builds to counter this.

Well, the thing is thief got buffed a lot, ele got nerfed the most. They only sort of buffed and nerfed dd ele at the same time, but other specs didn’t get anything good but nerfs. So, I wouldn’t be surprised if we only saw dd eles after this. And according to others, all viable pve specs were removed to have only staff viable after this goes live. I don’t know if I will play ele anymore, it just makes me sad. I picked up thief because they seem to have lots good and interesting stuff incoming, but it’s no ele

I was thinking and I think it would be great if they got rid of Zephyr’s boon, as it’s pretty much useless, put Weak Spot on it place, keep LS where it is and bring back Air Training as a GM minor trait. It would make senese, since Burning Rage is similar and it is a GM minor trait, that would improve the air tree a lot.

Impact.2780:

Laraley.7695:

You probably don’t realize how much fresh air ele loses by not going arcana at all and taking suboptimal traits in fire.

1. Condi cleanse on 10 second cooldown in water, exchanged for 40 second cooldown passive cleanse that might as well remove conditions you don’t need to be removed, promoting passive play.
2. Vigor.
3. Protection, regeneration, swiftness on attunement swap. Protection is crucial for such a squishy build. (EC is bad because you have to get hit, same as they told memsers ‘’we don’t want you to get hit to have boons procs.)’’
4. Fury > loss in dps
5. Weakness in air, which is again crucial to such a squishy build.
6. One access to blind.
7. Bolt to the heart.
8. Damage loss due to nerf to Air Training.

You gain.

1. Flame barrier (lol), Sunspot, Burning rage > no crazy buffs there
2. Burning on crit (1 sec on 2 sec cooldown)
3. Three condi cleanse on 40 sec cd.
4. Blinding ashes maybe? Not such a good trait compared to loss of everything in Arcana.
5. Superspeed (3 sec on air), which is okay but doesn’t help with sustained dps.
6. Damage loss from major traits in Air.
7. Toughness in earth, 20% dmg reduction in 600 range, which mesmers and rangers will completely ignore.
8. Armour of earth (meh), earth skills cd reduced, soft cc duration reduced.
9. I don’t know about GM traits in earth. They’re not kinda appealing, I’m not saying they’re all bad but they promote passive play again.

These things are important to fresh air, which won’t be able to compete with the new buffed versions of mesmer and thief. The DPS loss is significant and some buffs in survability won’t change that. Where is your major power creep? Oh yeah, wrong class. Scepter is a bad weapon and needed rework since day one, but they just don’t bother with ele anymore.

Fresh air atm is 0/6/0/4/4, they don’t even take evasive arcana. You completely ignored the part where I said “and utilities” for condi cleanse. You will have more power now, from the base increase and gear stats increase. You can afford to drop something cheesy like an insta-cast always-crit arcane blast, for a condi cleanse. You can even take cantrips for the might stacks from burning fire instead of ignoring that factor and calling it purely a passive trait. You also can’t have it both ways; you can’t complain that burning fire is passive and therefore bad to use, yet complain about having to get up to 600 range closer to a mesmer for geomancer’s defence to kick in. If geomancer’s defence had no range factor, it’d be purely passive and overpowered. You also ignored the point about it stacking with protection from external sources, and the fact that this is a team game after all. Listing one access to a blind as a loss, but “maybe?” next to a trait that allows you to blind every 3 seconds regardless of attunement? You do realise blind causes a miss, and a miss is essentially 100% damage mitiagation, right? Furthermore, blinding ashes won’t require you to burn a dodge to cause the blind; they will just get blinded more often, saving you dodges, which means more survival resources.

No, there is a variation of a fresh air build that goes 06044, some go 6 in arcana. I personally play either 26006 or 26026. Doesn’t mean that everyone goes 06044, simple. So you’re suggesting fresh air should take cleansing fire? That sounds pretty bad. I don’t use arcane skills apart from arcane shield, then I usually run Signet of Air, because it’s great. Blind + stun break + damage on very shot cooldown. I doubt any fresh air ele will go earth, might as well go dd. It was your suggestion. I’m just stating for fresh air, it’s bad. So your suggestion would be for fresh air ele to go fire, air and earth? That would be really great.