Guild Wars 2

Wryog.5073:

I’m really not sure if they know that we can use a focus.
I think that it was supposed to be a defensive weapon but without any heals and bad/no scaling on the rest of the abilities it’s really situational at best.

Focus is supposed to be a catalyst weapon for whichever mainhand the ele is using. Unfortunately, two of its elements fail to augment mainhand abilities in any meaningful way. Its hard cc is limited to a 50 sec cd ranged knockdown, leaving the only saving grace its ability to counter projectiles (that aren’t unblockable; see signet of might) and Obsidian Flesh.

The vast majority of BM traits are subpar; people invest in the line for healing/pet base damage. With the recent nerfs to pet damage, they should be improving pet traits by a lot and adding additional effects to pet skills to give them the utility we need.

The balance team for PvP is considerably smaller than the rest of the team if I recall correctly. Also their current priority is not QoL improvements but to attempt to balance this ridiculous meta. I feel your pain; I love the focus and would really enjoy seeing it get the buffs it needs in fire/water.

Azunai.5974:

Ffff, don’t use any of that fancy logic on me!

I dunno, I keep seeing all these eles talk about celestial gear, but you’re never gonna see that burning last very long against anybody with condition removal; it’s pretty much the only threat you present in terms of conditions; our only other condition of note (unless you are playing scepter or staff condi, which is pretty subpar) is chill, which does no damage. If you manage to land a churning earth, that is really the only time that extra condi damage will pay off.

Ryld.1340:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Ryld.1340:

Evasive Arcana – Earth: This has a few key problems. You have to be in range to use this on someone, and if you do, you only have 3 seconds of cripple to try and hit someone with one of your spells that is going to take 4 seconds to hit.

I find Evasive Arcane in Earth to be rather pointless, i mean it does like 50% of the damage/cripple/bleeding of the proper skill, which isnt that bad i just prefer the water and Fire ones over it

Don’t use it for damage. It’s a blast Finishers. That’s its whole purpose.

In theory the fire dodge would be good for condi builds; 5 sec of burning isn’t bad, but eles just suck at condi application so it’s not worth it in the long run.

Azunai.5974:

covenn.7165:

Celestial gear is pretty bad for an ele.

I wouldn’t say that. Elementalists and engineers benefit from the celestials because all stats are usefuk. It’s a kitten to farm for, though.

I’m going to strongly disagree on this point, not on the basis that celestial gear is bad for eles numerically, but that the current state of the game is not friendly towards celestial eles.

Elementalists would benefit far more if they could really capitalize on the condition damage. Unfortunately with a condi meta and the lack of condition variety compared to other professions, the math just can’t add up the way you want it to; eles can’t keep up with all the condi remove that’s become pretty standard nowadays. A higher investment in power is not only cheaper right now, but will probably be more effective for quite a while in terms of stats gained vs damage output.

Various elements within the staff’s skill set need different QoL adjustments before they can even think of adding damage. For instance, changing Meteor Shower so that it casts similarly to Healing Rain.

Arpheus.6918:

That would be even more decent But I think they want that people have to invest for permanent 1500 range on a weapon. Engi and Ranger have to trait for it.

Or they could give Longbow exclusive access to 1500 range save for a few skills in the game. 1500 range is apparently not broken, so there’s nothing conceptually wrong with it; it also gives LB something exclusive within the game. The problem for investing in that kind of range with pretty much no other benefit is that you aren’t really improving your overall performance. This helps LB fill in a niche while enabling them to make traits that are actually going to affect your combat in a really positive way.

Arpheus.6918:

They should just merge eagle eye and piercing arrows. Having to spend so many traits just to make the longbow decent is a problem especially since there are so many godly traits in that line like sigills work for the ranger and spotter.

Eagle Eye shouldn’t even exist. LB should just have 1500 range.

Wryog.5073:

Leuca.5732

The difference in skill level between GW1 GvG and the attempts in WvW is pretty laughable

I thought that that applied to the whole game?
At least with larger groups people use combo mechanics as support and not self-buffing. That promotes group coordination and coordination in the actual fight other than calling out a target.

The problem with larger groups is the lack of precision within the combat system. Unfortunately the mechanics in this game aren’t really conducive to large group-based organized pvp.

Also, are you seriously nitpicking at that one part of my post when it does nothing to detract from my point? I even added a more global statement at the end of my post; did you even read it?

Knote.2904:

I think you got it backwards.

Anet is focusing too much on the upper right, when the other 3 corners are the playerbase that Anet needs to please and get on board so there’s even an audience/support for the Esports side of the game.

If you cater only to the upper right and give them love, give them a giant stadium and prize money to duke it out and say F—- you to the other 3 corners, your grand champions will be fighting in an empty stadium lol.

They’re focusing on something between upper and lower right but with a system that fails to support the kind of skilled gameplay they advertise.

Most Marksmanship traits are awful. Ironic that the line contains a trait that’s actually beneficial to crit-based power builds.

I really wish LR would stop doing damage and start removing snares like similar skills in this game.

Zoij.3498:

Thanks for the replies!
I’ve had a look around and a x/x/x/30/30 build looks good. I’d like to base it around power more than crit chance/dmg though, for more consistent damage. Would a 10/0/0/30/30 build with Power Toughness Healing gear work for heal support with acceptable DPS?

Eles scale much better off of having crit damage than you would expect. It’s not hard to get about 25% crit chance and 50+% extra crit damage while retaining decent survivability.

Wryog.5073:

The mighty GW1 GvGers started comparing them. I don’t see why you’re mad at us.

Perhaps we did draw up the comparison ourselves, but that’s partially because those of us who played GW1 rather extensively really wanted a viable GvG format in GW2. The difference in skill level between GW1 GvG and the attempts in WvW is pretty laughable, not to mention the complete lack of a guild hall, which was why it was called GvG in the first place, especially when there were other formats in which guild groups would face each other. What’s worse is that WvW has even less balance than SPvP; you have rampant PvE exclusive equipment and access to ridiculous setups that shouldn’t even exist, leaving those of us who care for balanced PvP in the dust.

For my own part, it’s more frustrating that the game was sold on being so skill-based, but turned into this; I can’t seriously play any sort of PvP without feeling sort of ridiculous.

Elidath.5679:

Say hello to the mesmer, and its streak of 10 months of constant nerfs. Elem isn’t alone
And don’t forget ele still have some sick skills too. Magnetic pulse (earth focus #4) clean conditions, blast finisher, reflect projectiles and deal aoe damages on a 30s CD, traitable at 24. Sick. But the problem with ele isn’t as much individual skills as synergies (focus is quite meh as a whole, despite magnetic pulse and swirling winds).
With 20 weapon skills, some are totally underwhelming, and some are very good. Before tweaking the traits, I would advocate making all weapons skills worthwhile, then balance around them.

I think you misunderstood what I was saying. I was referring to skills that were buffed on other professions without any sort of CD adjustment. I guess we miss each other on this sub-forum a lot, because I’m a frequent poster in threads that discuss how to fix weapon sets for the ele, since I’m a firm believer that weapons in this game should be self-sufficient before traits are introduced.

Also, the funny thing is that mesmers in general are stronger than eles now. They have much more variety when it comes to choosing traits and weapons, greater access to conditions in a condi meta, as well as a greater number of ways to provide team utility. Their burst is pretty fast and effective without blowing 3 utilities and all survivability and staff is still an absurdly powerful defensive tool with a pseudo stun-break every 6-8 seconds.

Wryog.5073:

Do you mind stopping with the “GvG stands only for what we did in GW1” comments?
Let me give you a hint: GvG=Guild versus Guild. Just like PvP=Player(s) versus Player(s). It doesn’t mention amount of players ANYWHERE in the name. It could be 25v25 capture the flag, 2v2 death match or 1v1 duel. Stop with the pointless “GvG is only 8v8 and you’re all bad for calling that GvG”.
Also I know that it’s hard to see what’s going on without listening to the commander of a team. The ridiculous amount of spell effects makes it hard to see anything. It takes a bit of time to get used to large numbers inside a splash of particles but it is possible to tell what’s happening with some practice.

It’s not that it only stands for what we did in GW1; it’s just embarrassing to really compare to two. The GW1 crowd is used to GvG being much more precisely skill oriented.

Chopps.5047:

Whaaaaat? LR doing dmg is the biggest reason I beat Liadri so easily.

trololo

Lightning Reflexes shouldn’t even DO damage. The only thing that effect is good for is getting smacked by retaliatory effects like Shock Aura or Retaliation.

I know, not entirely related to your post, but it’s something that annoys the crap out of me; I despise useless effects that could be removed to make room for something else.

A general good build involves 0/10/0/30/30 traits or 0/20/0/20/30. These are both generally the most user-friendly/numerically effective builds, combining crit chance/damage with good survivability and utility. Eles have plenty of access to fury, so I don’t find running pure Berserker stats quite necessary.

Right now I’m using a combination of Berserk/Soldier stats with a little Knight thrown in, with runes of Melandru to help with stuns/conditions to open up my utility slot options a little more. My traits are 0/20/0/20/30 and I like to have all weapons available for whatever situation I may be in.

GW1 GvG was almost an art form. This game will never achieve that level of intricacy in its combat because of class design and the overall lack of precision in combat. Legacy of the Foefire actually draws some inspiration from GW1 GvG, but entire games can be fought and won without the enemy’s base even being a factor.

One of the main problems with removing the trinity (not going into how it sort of still exists) is the removal of various game types from your list of options.

BlackBeard.2873:

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

I personally think most CD’s are in a good place in terms of design. Big effects with big cooldowns promotes skilled play over spamming. Fire shield needs to be fixed however, as does focus 4 in water (its just a chill, no aoe or anything). Also, RtL needs to be reverted by a LOT.

What we really need are better auto-attacks to go along with our high-cooldown skill-shots so that we can use them at the right time (make sure firegrab won’t be dodged, using CE only when you can LoS and Lightning flash). Alacrity skills also need to do more, perhaps 33% reduction of attunement with a 20% increase in recharge rate of that attunement.

Plenty of professions have big effects with relatively low cooldowns that haven’t been adjusted as the skills have gotten stronger. The elementalist is fairly alone in this regard.

Fiery Lily.8046:

@Leuca: seems to me that your opinion there shows more of an issue with the game rather than the ele itself. Or I misunderstand what u r saying? Or u mean it’s particularly bad with ele? In the second case can u make a comparison with another profession to make it clearer? Cause it seems to me, but we may simply disagree, that traits for specific weapon sets are quite rare in ele trees while quite common in other profession. Again maybe i completely misunderstand what u r saying.

I was speaking more of the lack of synergy within certain weapon sets (staff/focus are the main offenders) and the necessity of having certain traits for some weapons to even be effective. Both problems are startlingly obvious on the ele, though I did say they exist throughout the rest of the professions to one degree or another. The fact that Arcana spec is pretty much required for most builds because of badly designed attunement cooldowns compounds this problem, because traits you could bring to potentially alleviate the problems some of our sets are essentially closed off.

My guess is that because nobody is at the required rank that it has yet to be forged in pvp.

Erm, I think they require some high ranking something or another..

Lokheit.7943:

2500 is a huge lot. It would break sieges soooooooooo much.

Btw: I think it’s not fair bringing the Thief so many times considering the Thief can’t throw a projectile at more than 900 range (previously they had Cluster Bomb that you needed to wait like 4 hours for it to land, and even that one was nerfed to 900 range).

Some professions have better range or more kite ability, others have better gap closers (btw not too many thieves trait for the 1500 range Steal as not too many invest on Trickery and in that tier there are other traits that are more popular). If you start giving professions more range, other professions will start to get ways to close bigger gaps as they balance the game. If that starts scaling too much it might get crazy.

Making one weapon the sole keeper of 1500 range will not create this problem.

Zelyhn.8069:

All our alacrity traits are complete rubbish.

Air is easily the best one, but that’s only because air provides the CC we desperately need, meaning the skill pretty much applies to Shocking Aura, Updraft, Gale, and Static field. Everything else (not including RtL which got its recharge nerfed to oblivion because nobody could “catch up” to us) doesn’t need it.

There were more options in Beta than there are now, partially because of how you could set up your traits and partially because a lot of things were “strong.”

Perhaps this meta is better than a different one at some point in time, but the lack of balance is pretty inexcusable on Anet’s part.

Also, the fact that condi damage pretty much rules everything right now discounts a lot of the builds you are mentioning as options.

Thesilentflute.8761:

I would not say that exactly when I brought this up months ago ostrig eggs was arguing with me and he was 1 in over all wins at the time. He just kept saying don’t nerf me bro there is no problem with my aoe necros aoe just needs a buff.

Edit: “With some common sense” sry missed that part.

A large number of the pvp community saw this snowballed condi meta coming. The last balance patch pretty much saw all of our fears realized.

Lack of communication between Anet/players is a huge reason for the current meta. Any relatively experienced player with some common sense could have told them this was coming. Assuming we get a balance update every 2 months, how much time out of that is spent making decisions and how much is spent working on code? Is there a window of opportunity to throw ideas to the playerbase and receive feedback?

TGSlasher.1458:

Stop Drop and Roll also heals you but no condition removal (same as EA heal minus condition removal)

That trait is pretty obsolete compared to other sources of condition removal.

Edit: Er, I totally misread that. Honestly, the water attunement dodge from EA is almost good enough to be its own trait. Fire and air would need a lot of help, and earth would just need a little tweaking.

TGSlasher.1458:

Nice thought, but what tree would it go into? Arcane … forces us down there further.
Fire? Not many use it.
Air? Good for GC but not bunker.
Water? Good for bunker but not GC
Earth? Similar to fire

Keep a global CD trait in Arcana, but split a full recharge bonus between Arcana and respective elements. Remove Evasive Arcana and split into minor or master traits across the attunements for different dodges. Set element CD to 9.5/10 seconds and change investment bonus for Arcana investment.

This is of course assuming that kind of trait existed in the Arcana line. I’m not sure if I want that though, because it would still pressure people too much into speccing high in Arcana with the other good traits that are available there.

Azunai.5974:

What I think Anet should try is to remove the cdr per attunement traits and just add traits that reduce skills for a weapon.

“Your dagger skills recharge 10% faster across all attunements.”

Leaves room for the element specific ones to be reduced to 10-15% and have additional effects added.

Ryld.1340:

Healing Ripple: Thisskill’sscalingwith healing power has been reduced by 50% in PvP only, as it had scaling that’s normally reserved for main healing skills. The maximum number of targets has also been reduced from infinite to 5.

Sorry, just the scaling on healing power I guess. For bunkers, that was a huge change as well. Double blow to healing as well as removing the Ea blasts in that patch.

As an ele main, I think it served them right for getting so used to having infinite blast finishers when it clearly wasn’t intended. No doubt it was a huge blow, but getting complacent is something I’m used to seeing in the playerbase now.

Give LB a set 1500 range, SB to 1200, remove Eagle Eye trait and move the damage effects to other traits. Remove ability for other professions to gain 1500 range on anything, and bam. It doesn’t solve the problems LB has as a DPS weapon, but it’s a start on making the weapon somewhat unique.

We should create a thread to brainstorm alternative effects you can gain from investing in Arcana, because Arcana’s necessity will never cease until we have a fixed attunement cd. On a different note, I’ve considered removing Evasive Arcana and moving the dodge effects to minor/master traits across the lines, while increasing their effects.

TGSlasher.1458:

What annoys me the most is that the cool down on Fire Shield (focus if you didn’t know) is the same as the cool down on Frosty Aura. I don’t know if you know this or not but the frosty aura is pow(10,1 million); times better then the fire shield. 10% damage reduction, applies chill when a foe attacks vs 3x 1 sec burn and 3x might.

What annoys me is that they put Fire Shield on focus without giving it some secondary effect that’s exclusive to the elementalist. You can get the aura twice before your focus skill recharges just by using Magnetic Grasp through your Burning Speed field.

Rskin.4901:

What annoys me the most though is the cooldown of churning earth and fire grab. It’s ridiculous.

Churning is only a 30 second CD for a huge kaboom aoe skill. If they reduced the cast time by a second or something we would have a skill that wasn’t quite so useless in fast-paced combat.

RtL got nerfed pretty hard, but Updraft hasn’t really changed much at all if I’m correct. Gale has a longer CD anyway and has nothing over Updraft but range.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Geyser has too short a duration to do anything other than really well coordinated Blast Finishers for healing. It’s so lackluster on it’s own. A change is welcome.

Healing Rain is fine as it is. I mean, I’m thankful enough that casting the skill won’t root you anymore.

Reduce healing per pulse by 40% and add another 2 seconds to the skill duration + a 10-15% recharge increase. This increases ability to provide the intrinsic support staff was designed for without the ele speccing into healing power just to get something out of the skill, while also preventing cleric eles from spike healing with it. While this allows much more time for blast finishers, the reduced healing will prevent spike/sustain healing from anything that isn’t completely specced for it. It also rewards creative skill placement since you have more duration to work with.

Issues with eles run even deeper with that. I’m talking awkwardly designed weapons that don’t take each other into account, and even elements in the same set that aren’t designed around flowing well together. Without traits, even a staff ele would be subpar, leaving d/d and s/d as the only sets that start to flow within each other. This kind of situation is pretty unacceptable. You cannot rely on specific traits to make your set viable; it must have some relatively effective output by itself. This is rampant throughout the game actually. It seems like once the trait system was put into place, weapons started being balanced around them being active, instead of as standalone entities with traits adding a little flavor along with stat boosts.

However, if Arcana was reworked to give some other bonus aside from attunement recharge, and the recharge was set to 9-10 seconds, this would free up a huge amount of working room for rebalancing the profession as a whole.

It’s getting a little ridiculous. Unfortunately the in-game report function doesn’t have an appropriate option for bug exploits.

aspirine.6852:

Leuca.5732:

XGhoul.7426:

Calm down forum warriors, the skins drop as random loot, you can buy them off TP if you choose to do so.

Source?

They are on the TP right now.

I see them on TP, but that doesn’t mean they are random loot.

DiogoSilva.7089:

All cantrips being stunbreakers wasn’t a good idea neither. It made cantrip eles too strong.

No, it really didn’t. If cantrips were reverted eles would gain nothing but a little more strength against the condi/fear/stun spam. Their damage would not increase, and they would still not be top tier bunkers.

Tell me a single other profession that can do over 9k damage at nearly instant speed. Your opponents can’t even react to that burst, and elementalists still have updraft, still have the entire fire traitline, can still heal and remove conditions on themselves and allies on water, and still switch back to earth for aoe protection.

Earthquake is hardly instant, and if you are spotted mid-cast a single dodge kills the entire spike, because its proper application requires all the skills be cast in a very short amount of time. It won’t take long for the playerbase to become accustomed to this kind of burst and punish it hard, because these eles give up a lot of escape/survivability to pull off that damage.

XGhoul.7426:

Calm down forum warriors, the skins drop as random loot, you can buy them off TP if you choose to do so.

Source?

Coroner.3168:

Leuca.5732:

Just spent 20g to get 5 keys and didn’t get a single piece for one of those tickets. Then I actually went and looked at the skins; no way am I wasting any more gold on that.

Why would you try to get a ticket for a weapon whose skin you hadn’t even seen yet!?

More on topic: Could someone post a screenshot of a couple of the weapons please? I can’t view them ingame since I am at work, but I’m deadly curious of how the swords and hammer look like. Absolutely loved them in the original game. I do wish ArenaNet would make more weapon sets that had to be earned, not given to you randomly :/

I loved Zodiac weapons in GW1. I figured they would be more true to how I remembered them. I didn’t spend real money to get my gems and 20g wasn’t a huge loss for me, but it’s still disappointing. The warhorn.. is a shiny chicken/rooster thing. Some of them aren’t bad (I don’t mind the dagger/staff) but for the tiny chance you have at getting what you need to buy one, I expected them to be better.

Just spent 20g to get 5 keys and didn’t get a single piece for one of those tickets. Then I actually went and looked at the skins; no way am I wasting any more gold on that.

The update hasn’t actually gone live yet. You will see yellow text in your chat log when it goes live if you are logged in.

Linguistically Inept.6583:

Leuca.5732:

Make SB 1200 range and LB 1500 range default. Remove Eagle Eye trait and start making traits that aren’t gimmick garbage.

eagle eye is also +5% damage…

Oh you.