Guild Wars 2

STRanger.5120:

Sanlucifer.1742:

I posted this somewhere but i guess it would be better to post it here:

I was wondering if Chill affects initiative, weapon swap, adrenaline or etc? i know for a fact that it affects attunement swap and is really overpower against eles.
So i guess if it does affect the rest of the classes like that its k if not, it shouldn’t affect eles or at least it should affect other classes as well, i guess.

Very good point, anyone tested this? Or if some Dev have a while, it would be really nice to clarify this

Chill does not affect initiative or regular weapon swapping. It does affect attunements and individual skill recharges, including mesmer shatters iirc.

CETheLucid.3964:

Bringing less than two in any kind of WvW/PvP situation is silly.

Problem with game design.

But alright. I suppose that is a valid criticism. So, are you saying it’s fine the way that it is now?

Not at all. I posted a concept change for the skill on this page for how I think it could work. This skill hasn’t touched my utility bar since.. ever.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

It’s the only tier 1 AOE cleanse in the game is the main reason, other factors are that its also an on demand cleanse, and it can be used every 10 seconds.

^^ directly from JP’s mouth just now

Factoring in that it’s on-demand, the only way to get it to a 10 second recharge (which is false, it’s actually 11 (see global attunement cooldown)) is to:

1) invest fully in Arcana, which people often do to stack it with Evasive Arcana and

2) attune to Water as soon as it is available, and then immediately swap out.

However, that’s 40 trait points and an extremely predictable rotation just to maximize efficacy from what is essentially an ele’s weapon swapping, except eles are the single profession that can have their swapping mechanic affected by Chill, while having a large portion of their most valuable baseline effects tied to it. It’s also important to consider that the 2nd requirement assumes that the ele is not significantly putting any of their Water skills to significant use, which is not how any decent ele will realistically play. The following are more often than not included in an ele’s rotation when contextually appropriate:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ice_Spike
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Geyser
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Frozen_Ground
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Healing_Rain
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Water_Trident
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cone_of_Cold
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Frozen_Burst
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cleansing_Wave
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Freezing_Gust
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Comet

The consecutive use of some/enough of these skills is guaranteed to increase the cooldown on the trait in question. Please note that I actually excluded skills that are not often viable in real combat situations. Were they to be more than marginally useful, the list of effective cooldown increasing skills would be larger. You can then add on any skills used in other attunements during optimal rotation that aren’t used before. These are not quite as important to consider as how long it actually takes you to leave Water Attunement and put it on cooldown, but it doesn’t feel like the balancing here is taking realistic play into account. In order to trigger Cleansing Wave, you are locking yourself out of your previous weapon set for 10 seconds, and your others for one second.

An ele is realistically getting Cleansing Wave to trigger every 12-14 seconds at most (I’m probably being generous, seeing as we actually like to get more than sustain out of our rotations), but this cooldown can be manually increased via status-effects, unlike effects that automatically trigger at set intervals. This means that even if you gave the trait an internal cooldown, it would still probably trigger upon every attunement to Water unless the cooldown was made unreasonably high.

This problem doesn’t exist for just Cleansing Wave though; it afflicts almost every effect the ele has that is tied to a specific attunement. (see: Elemental Attunement)

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Not going to dive too far into answering this but the designers moved these traits to the master line because they consider them traits too strong to be adept. Surely you can imagine a bunch of ideas were on the table.

Why are they too strong to be adept? A condition cleanse every 10 seconds (requires maxed Arcana) and some boons on attunement. Stating the obvious here, but wouldn’t a better solution have included identifying factors that make them so strong and then toning those down? For instance, how numerically strong would Cleansing Wave still be if it only affected the Elementalist? I can only guess ideas like this were brought up, but who actually thinks Cleansing Wave would be too strong for the Adept tier if it had no aoe, and what ele wouldn’t still find it useful for the most part?

My issue with many of these changes is that they are unnecessarily counteracting changes that are meant to increase versatility.

Gorani.7205:

OK, this got way too long to read & follow for me.

Can somebody from the balance team (Tyler Chapman perhaps) post a revised version of the initial Dec 10th balance idea for the Elementalist?

I get the impression from Tyler Champman’s and Jon Peter’s posts (as far I I saw & read them) that out of the three critical changes to Master level traits (Cleansing Wave, Renewing Stamina & Elemental Atunement) only Elemental Attunement will be moved to Master tier – the other two will remain Adept traits (?).

Elemental Attunement and Cleansing Wave are both getting moved to Master tier in an attempt to make eles move away from Water/Arcana.

CETheLucid.3964:

Or, how about for the duration of GoEP the next stun used against you is automatically broken?

If this happens, GoEP ends. It keeps it’s current “use it before the fight” functionality, and the stun break isn’t wasted.

Makes the enemy think twice if they see it on you. They have to wonder if it’s worth using a stun to break your glyph.

It’s pretty obvious when someone has it active, you’ll see it in their status bar so they can’t say it’s not telegraphed.

It also encourages people to use the skill the way it was intended to be used. That said, I really like Swagg’s idea.

But if we’re going for low hanging fruit, just making the stunbreak auto-fire on stun while GoEP is active seems a much simpler solution.

It makes the skill inefficient for eles who actually watch for priority stuns.

Example: Warrior sees animation/effect indicator for GoEP, makes sure to smack ele with Pommel Bash before going for a Skull Crack. Ele burned his stunbreaker before the fight even started, and is unable to properly react unless he brought more stunbreakers.

JonPeters.5630:

Vox Hollow.2736:

Ah, Zen
I think he means Swoop would receive the invulnerability effect of an evasion for the duration of the existing animation, not that it would help you evade something by automatically moving you backward. Less like Lightning Reflexes, more like Mesmer Distortion.

Correct!

That’s asking for abuse. Can you honestly say that an almost 1200 range leap with an evade for most (if not all) of its duration would not negatively impact how well people can stick to melee rangers? You’d honestly be better off putting the evade on Maul in this case. It’d be conceptually out-of-place, but the skill is already highly telegraphed, meaning your opponent still has ample time to decide whether they want to dodge or block it.

Leave it on the auto attack chain and improve the functionality there. It will lend to itself if the auto attacks start doing any respectable damage, which can be approached by improving attack speed (this already decreases the evade per activation), improving base damage and/or ratios, or a combination of both.

Nabuko Darayon.9645:

I’m opt not to make any specific criticism until tested out. I hope at least we will be able to get out of 30 Arcana and still make them useable.

Maxing Arcana gives you the same results as before, so they haven’t really fixed the problem with that yet. Apparently it’s just out of the question to rework a clearly faulty swapping concept. Eles are the only profession with a primary mechanic that actually restricts their weapon swapping if they don’t invest into it. Coupled with the fact that attunements are affected by Chill (and various PvE effects that cripple recharges), this is just a bad combination to start with as a profession base.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Saying it would destroy Ele is strictly theory crafted hyperbole but I can respect your emotional reaction to that change. A lot of things are changing and from the internal testing I’ve personally done with ele (2000+ tournament games played on live on top teams) ele is looking really strong. I’m beating most everything 1v1 right now with the spec I’ve been running.

It won’t destroy Eles but it will severely hamper our performance. What possible solutions did you guys look at for Cleansing Water and Elemental Attunement before deciding to go on with the changes for them?

Cleansing Wave nerf. GG

Our stunbreaks need to be looked at btw. Glyph of Elemental Power is currently unacceptable and Signet of Air is only even taken because of the recharge. People kept Lightning Flash because they couldn’t give up the mobility; it has nothing to do with the skill really comparing to other teleports.

JonPeters.5630:

Some ranger discussion.

Natural Vigor
Starting here because I think it requires the most discussion…

I think my only qualm was cutting it so hard right off the bat. I understand and for the most part agree with you guys here, but I would have seen if a reduction to 33% was enough before taking it down to 25%.

Spirits Unbound and Nature’s Voice
I think the biggest change of moving spirits unbound is it allows you to take this trait along with Nature’s Voice. Internally we have done some testing where you bring stone spirit, guard, and then still have a open third utility slot to make some truly good support ranger builds. Spirits have always had that feel and I think this brings that to the forefront.

Spirits in GW1 were interesting because of how they interacted not only with players but with each other and non-spirit abilities, some with only moderate investment. I think toning them down but making them more universally accessible is a really cool idea.

Power Rangers
One idea we talked about for Greatsword would be to take the evade off of the 3rd attack of the auto-chain and put it on swoop. This would give you a second on-demand defensive skill and instead we put something less timing based (for example a whirl finisher) on that third attack to empower it.

I think rangers would rather have more frequent mobility than to have the recharge on Swoop nerfed to accommodate an evade that could make our disengaging ability OP. Perhaps increasing the average attack speed on the auto attack chain with a slight base damage/ratio buff (this would create slightly shorter but more frequent evades from the chain). GS also needs still needs improvement on its #4; the throw is numerically weak for damage and cannot cleave, and in return we get an counter that is beyond easy to bait/fake out. The counter attack is too slow, locks you in place (unless you cancel animation), and doesn’t knock foes back to an optimal distance to combo with abilities. (looking at #2 and #5)

Maul is still not up to par for damage due to its speed/telegraphing. I realize the GS is an interesting defensive weapon but there’s really no reason for people to be afraid of it right now.

Main-hand sword
I just want to clarify for good that main hand sword is currently working as intended.

It seems you’re referring to the auto attack chain, but what of #‘s 2 and 3? Hornet Strike is too slow/clunky to be reliably used for anything other than completely disengaging an opponent temporarily, with a too-short window to use a Monarch’s Leap with relatively unimpressive effects.

Serpent’s Strike has really nice reaction time, but has awkward pathing that for many rangers makes it used more for the free evade and less for damage/poison.

Fenrina.2954:

I disagree about using Fire Aura for defense. I’d rather have Sunspot (Fire 15) replaced as it’s borderline useless. Alternatively, have defensive traits at grandmaster. Since I use d/d, I cannot access Fire Aura directly. I do not want to be forced to focus on Fire’s Embrace (which can already trigger Elemental Shielding anyway).

You have two fire fields and a leap finisher.

Example

Glyph of Elemental Power – Activates a spell at your location based on current attunement (breaks stun)

Fire: Damages and burns adjacent foes (max 5) for x seconds.

Air: Knocks adjacent foes (max 5) back x distance with a gust of wind and weakens them for x seconds.

Earth: Damages and applies cripple/torment to adjacent foes (max 5) for x seconds.

Water: Dazes adjacent foes (max 5) for x seconds and applies chill for x seconds.

Dingle.2743:

If you’re worried about making the profession focused around it, make it a core feature instead, and maybe promote Elemental Attunement to that trait slot.

New profession stat line: Lingering Elements Duration. We have a base Lingering Elements of 1, +0.2 seconds per point in Arcana (Max 7 seconds, 4 seconds at 15 which is 1 less than currently). Have it work with all attunement-specific trait effects because you either have a short duration on them, or can’t spec into a large enough amount to make them overpowered.

Attunement Recharge Rate is removed from the stat line; either the effect of it is spread out to the Alacrity traits (each now reduces the matching attunement’s recharge to 10 seconds), or the base recharge is set to a flat 10 seconds.

6 out of 8 professions currently have “F1-F4 cooldown reduction” as their stat lines, and that’s… well, incredibly boring. This could be a chance to make the elementalist more unique.

Many players (myself included) have suggested something along the lines of this. I’m honestly confused as to why attunements don’t have a set cooldown with a different Arcana investment bonus; it would solve the main conundrum eles face, and attunement recharge is already affected by chill, unlike regular weapon swapping.

Taldren.7523:

Leuca.5732:

You are suggesting that this kind of build would be broken.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQBoAgKIUgghiQ+QowCHqHmB

I respectfully disagree on the basis that damage increases are not additive.

I think he is more afraid of a build like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmIbwx5QlEIkCpwoQHIeYBOAHWUMD5AA-jECBofBkgAkEBI7pIaslhFRjVXDT5iIq2cuIa1SBwqwI-w

Water to Air would be a 20% increase in damage … which I already do by Earth to Water for Churning Earth. If it isn’t OP there, I don’t know why it would be for Water -> Air.

A 20% increase in damage to vulnerable foes, which can be soundly countered by condition cleansing. The first time you get hit by something like this, it may take you by surprise, but it’s numerically very easy to deal with, especially coming from an ele, which doesn’t have a large number of conditions it can stack.

DiogoSilva.7089:

I agree with Jon. The problem isn’t Lingering Elements, but how effective(less) the minor 5pts traits are.

The problem is that the 5 point traits are traits to begin with, meaning even if Lingering Elements technically functions correctly, in any optimal build it’s only slightly increasing the effects of maybe two minor traits.

JonPeters.5630:

I think this trait needs better wording. I hope you all understand why that trait would be wildly overpowered if it carried over everything particularly all 10% damage bonuses. You could simply slam through all attunements and then get 50% bonus damage. Similarly making other things work with this would requires those traits get lowered in the base case as well. I think this is a fine 15 point minor trait on its own and we can reword it and then discuss the merits of the other traits on their own.

To me, that is a better starting point for discussion than attempting to balance all of these effects with how they might work with a minor trait in Arcana. That would predicate the entire profession around that trait which is not what we want out of our minor traits.

Jon

As it is, most eles who invest enough in Arcana to even get this minor trait are at most only getting to significantly invest in two other traitlines. The myriad defensive effects one would have to sacrifice to come close to the situation you describe would effectively neuter a functioning build.

You are suggesting that this kind of build would be broken.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQBoAgKIUgghiQ+QowCHqHmB

I respectfully disagree on the basis that damage increases are not additive.

Belorn.2659:

Don’t forget One with Fire, even if no one uses it.

One With Fire would function properly if its prerequisites did, so it may be moot.

JonPeters.5630:

Give me a list of what else you think might be considered a passive benefit of these attunements, and I am happy to discuss the merits of this stuff working with this trait. However, posts that say things like “this isn’t everything” are just not constructive.

I think the disconnect comes from the player base considering these to be “passive” traits since they don’t have specific effects like “do x immediate effect when attuning to x.” They also are worded the same way as the 5 point minor traits.

To us, it’s obvious, but we have a different perspective.

They could be listed as the following:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Internal_Fire

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pyromancer%27s_Puissance
(This one actually affects all skills used while attuned to fire, including utilities)

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Air_Training

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Strength_of_Stone

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Piercing_Shards

Zelyhn.8069:

These are not all passive bonuses.

But thank you for taking the time to reply.

Edit: and thank you for making a trait that could be the highlight of the class be so pathetic.

Agreed. These are certainly not all the passive effects it could potentially work with. This also highlights another issue with the attunements, which is that we require trait-investment to get any bonus out of them, which means that this trait will only affect elements you’ve traited at least 5 into. That’s 20 points down the drain just to get some kind of effect on all four attunements when the trait is supposed to do that anyway. This issue is compounded upon by the fact that the upcoming changes will not eliminate the problem of Arcana investment being too valuable.

juno.1840:

I really like earth and air on the Focus, but I’d have to spend 40 points under the new scheme to get reduced c/d on just those two attunements. A per-weapon trait would be cool but now staff c/d or dagger c/d is much more valuable than focus c/d or scepter c/d.

There are already traits that have a sort of global effect when you have a weapon equipped. The problem would be creating traits for scepter/dagger that can also benefit focus.

Example 1: Windborne Dagger – While wielding a dagger, your skills recharge x% faster and you move 25% faster. (dual wielding does not increase this effect)

Example 2: Vigorous Scepter – While wielding a scepter, your skills recharge x% faster and your endurance recovers 33% faster.

Example 3: Blasting Staff – While wielding a staff, your skills recharge x% faster and aoe skills are x% larger. (I think many staff skills could still use a slight increase in base area covered before this trait)

In this case you don’t need to make one for focus because the two traits that deal with single-handed weapons can also benefit focus users. The problem with traits like these however is that they might be strong enough to be required. What % cd reduction would be good enough to consider without making them a really high tier and forcing investment into a certain trait line? Perhaps something like this could be moved to a master/grandmaster minor trait?

New minor trait: Elemental Alacrity – Your weapon spells recharge x% faster.

You’d have to make it either have decreased effect on elements already affected by an alacrity trait, or make its base amount additive yet low enough to not make trait stacking over the top.

Regardless of how a trait like this would be balanced however, it would necessitate a rework of Arcana’s investment bonus. As it is, Arcana’s current bonus is a hindrance to build versatility, even after the baseline attunement recharge reduction.

Touch-typing comes really naturally to me, but for some reason I’ve almost always used a combination of key-binds and mouse clicks for skill activations, and nobody’s ever called me out on it.

Avatara.1042:

Burning Precision – this needs a rework. Change it to 30% chance on HIT to inflict a 2 second burn. 4 second cooldown. Unlinking it from precision is vital, so Elementalists can use Dire gear and this trait.

We’ve already seen that on-crit burn traits are bad enough for balance due to unblockable effects; this wouldn’t help the problem.

The Game Slayer.7632:

I think we have gotten as loud as we can get. I have no doubt in my mind anet saw this post. It’s just a matter of time now before they do something. It seems tho that this patch was focused entirely on traits for us, which was a huge thing. the new baseline CD on attunements will make for more build diversity and new traits will be fun to mess around with. They are listening, just give them time i hope.

If most of the changes they have proposed go through, they will actually hurt the ele more than help it.

JonPeters.5630:

Diamond SkinThe strength of this build is going to be the ability to quickly string small heals together to maintain that condition resistance.

What small heals? The vast majority are in water/arcana/weapon sets, meaning that this trait requires flawless play and the usage of staff or offhand dagger in combination with other survivability traits to even maintain moderate efficiency for its investment.

In this case if this trait is not powerful enough to be a grandmaster…

And the trait still won’t be worth its slot. Changing its tier has minimal effect because the resource it operates with is going to forever be at lowest tier. This trait is never going to be numerically considerable because it will never operate in a feasible setting for the elementalist.

Aquamancer’s Alacrity
We moved this trait because all profession cooldown traits are in master tier, and because that is a good investment for this type of improvement…

The reason these traits speak so much to elementalists when we invest in their lines is partially because of the arcana problem, which the proposed changes are not going to sufficiently fix. If I can’t swap to my attunements as much as I should be reasonably able to, I’m going to at least guarantee that some of my skills are recharging faster.

Cleansing Wave
This is the one I am most on the fence about of all of the elementalist changes. It is a borderline master level trait…

Its borderline status is due to its aoe function. There doesn’t seem a be much of a happy medium with these kinds of effects. You have the same problem with Elemental Attunement. Boons and small heals/utility spells are a base-level necessity for eles, but you make them aoe, which exponentially increases their numerical value. You can keep their inherent value to eles by leaving their tiers alone and either reducing/removing aoe functions. There are myriad aoe effects the elementalist has access to in master/grandmaster traits, as well as across weapons sets.

Arcane Abatement

Globally decrease fall damage and remove/rework fall damage traits. They mean almost nothing in the vast majority of real-combat situations.

Soothing Disruption vs Cantrip Mastery

The increasing inferiority of cantrips won’t make switching Cantrip Mastery to adept that much better, especially since most eles already delve 15 into water magic for the heal/condition removal at this point and ignore cantrip-related traits because of the aforementioned neutering. Continuing use of things like Lightning Flash doesn’t mean you guys made a good change; it means we cannot function without the mobility.

Arcana
I see the logic in not wanting the two changes in this line to counter each other.

The problem is that it’s almost perfect logic. If you counter a productive change with another one of almost equal magnitude, you’ve essentially accomplished nothing.

That being said, Elemental Attunement is just a beast of a trait…

No, it’s just base-level operating for most eles. We need boons.

That could leave some interesting builds such as: 0/30/30/0/10…

This kind of setup is blatantly inefficient because the ele gains no trait-based vitality to make Diamond Skin work better, severely restricting our equipment choices if we want to even try to justify the 30 point investment. You are also suggesting that we burn 40 trait points for basic access to protection on stun.

There were only a few changes that were really that productive. Assuming they go through with these changes as currently planned, they’re going to hurt eles more than help them.

FrownyClown.8402:

Cleansing wave was a grandmaster trait.

No it wasn’t.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cleansing_Wave

… before enough coding has been changed to call anything a “patch preview.”

Just sayin’.

This patch will be interesting for eles, to say the least. It’s not going to significantly help many of their core problems though.

Anet, you guys have to realize that simply decreasing the severity of the Arcana problem doesn’t remove it, not to mention that some of your proposed changes here actually counteract what you’re trying to accomplish.

Analysis of ele changes:

Fire II – Burning Fire

Cool. This is an interesting way to introduce alternative forms of condition removal.

Fire VIII – Conjurer

Irrelevant. Conjures are still not up to par. Their mechanics are too clunky and highly telegraphed to be competitive. This trait would have been nice if conjures functioned like engineer kits with a different recharge mechanic.

Fire III – Ember’s Might.

Our burns already have decent duration, often long enough to get cleansed before they run their course, without any significant boost to duration. Lack of cover conditions means that the potential damage increase this trait grants is wasted.

Burning Rage 25

Making a small improvement to a 25-investment trait conditional damage that still only starts to stack up to similarly functioning traits that aren’t conditional still leaves Burning Rage in the dust overall.

Air V – Soothing Winds.

Irrelevant. If you were going to give this a meaningful conversion %, it would necessitate a tier move.

Air XI – Tempest Defense.

This is something I can get on board with in terms of bringing eles up to par, although I still dislike the concept of auto-proc traits like this.

Earth 5 – Stone Flesh

40 toughness seems nice but isn’t much in the long run. The lack of incentive to invest in the line even after your other changes doesn’t help the case for this trait.

Earth VII – Strength of Stone.

Makes sense for a condition trait to be in the condition damage line, but condition eles are still subpar; this isn’t accomplishing much right now.

Earth XI – Diamond Skin.

This sounds rude, but a change like this just shows a lack of insight into core mechanics in your game. Eles are tied for the lowest base health among all professions. Even with max toughness/vitality, you will only resist conditions for at most a few seconds into a fight, after which you can almost count on this trait becoming effectively nonexistent.

Water I – Aquamancer’s Alacrity.

Honestly disappointing; this trait actually helped all eles decrease their need to invest deeply in Water Magic, even if it’s not part of the meta. Now it’s been shoved even farther out of the meta.

Water V – Cleansing Wave.

This seems like a change brought on by your alteration to Burning Fire, but again ends up making it harder for eles to avoid investing in Water Magic.

Water VIII – Arcane Abatement.

This trait is too niche for a change like this to matter.

Water X – Soothing Wave.

Another irrelevant change. This trait is still not worth taking. Mist Form is barely on-par, conjures are still gimmicks, and Signet of Water is sub-par.

Arcane III – Arcane Retribution.

Moving a potentially interesting trait farther up the Arcana line while trying to decrease the necessity to invest in the line?

Arcane IV – Final Shielding.

This isn’t bad, but if the utility skill it mimics had a decent recharge to begin with, it could have been scrapped for something much more interesting.

Arcane V – Elemental Attunement.

No. Just no. This trait single-handedly spotlights the entire issue with Arcana being a required traitline, and you’re making it worse if this change goes into effect.

Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina.

Same thing as Elemental Attunement. Elementalists basically require boons to function at a base level as-is, not to mention that more than 90% of all vigor-exclusive-related traits are Adept level.

Arcane VII – Vigorous Scepter.

Doesn’t stack with Vigor, and is vastly inferior to it.

Arcane VIII – Blasting Staff.

Part of the problem with Blasting Staff is that in many situations it’s required for the elementalist to be effective with a staff. Simply making this function easier to access while simultaneously restricting our much-needed boon access within the same line isn’t helping the problem.

Arcane IX – Windborne Dagger.

With the myriad sources of swiftness eles have, this trait is irrelevant.

Diehard.1432:

Give them a break guys. I take that as tiny step towards positivity. At least we are not completely forgotten. Lets comment on it after we see the video.

Do you honestly think Izzy has that much more insight than a large portion of the player base? The top players (I use that phrase lightly) in this game run circles around the dev team, and quite a few of them have guides for professions/builds/etc.

It’s not that this isn’t well-intentioned; it’s just unnecessary. The time spent on this is just precious time taken away from other things that actually need doing.

Couldn’t really hurt to focus more on balancing the ranger and let the players create the guides. We already play the game better than the dev team; our guides are probably going to be on-par.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Warriors are pretty strong right now, but will be seeing changes in an upcoming patch.

We like how they can be tanky, and we like how they can do DPS if they want. We also like the CC they can bring. We just don’t like them doing it all with 1 build.

With all due respect, there are quite a few of us who pointed out the direction warriors were headed before it got to this point, and there are numerous threads quoting members of the balance team saying that there was at least some knowledge on their part that warriors would end up like this.

Unless I’m taking that information out of context, don’t you think it’s a bit destructive to knowingly create meta builds like this?

Whatever bug was causing signet passives to not apply upon entering a game seems to have returned. Happened a few times to me today.

So make it work like the trigger for Flesh Golem? I could see that working. Link it to the main effect the elemental has.

garethh.3518:

People have been saying “if this patch doesn’t bring good changes, the game is boned” since a month after release.

It still hasn’t happened.
If anything, the game is worse to play now than then.

Agreed, and it won’t get better at a suitable speed (balance-wise) until Anet hunkers down and gives balancing the manpower it demands at the moment.

I think if PvP had more of a financial impact on the game they may have elected to do so, but that’s not the case.

Some amount of PvP exp going towards PvE leveling progress. (If you can craft your way to level 80, why can’t you fight other players?)

Better ways of turning your PvP into workable currency in PvE

Using glory for a Zaishen Key system of sorts.

I wonder how many people in this thread played GW1 PvP and raged about how they couldn’t leave RA/TA/FA/JQ early and get all their points.

The only possible solution is to have some small amount of rank/glory awarded for mid-match achievements, with a larger bulk awarded for actually winning your match.

It is inherently destructive to building a healthy PvP base when your simplest format doesn’t encourage proper play.

sorrow.2364:

silvermember.8941:

Leuca.5732:

Don’t get your hopes up. Balance every 2-4 weeks (as it should be) is not Anet’s current battle plan.

Do they even have a battle plan?

More living story.

This seems to be it, unfortunately. I don’t know what the particular reason is, but Anet doesn’t seem to understand that if they balance their system better (as a priority) and make more of their inferior skills/traits good, the rest of the game’s content gains a lot of longevity.

Don’t get your hopes up. Balance every 2-4 weeks (as it should be) is not Anet’s current battle plan.

ImProVocateur.5189:

Totally unnecessary change. Armor of Earth could have a cooldown of 2m and still be fine.

Please take your hyperbole elsewhere. Powercreep has rendered AoE pretty much obsolete in the current meta, and possibly even after this meta ends.

Healing Signet is inherently less-effected by heal-over-time counters because it’s always up, which means your opponent has to maintain things like poison constantly to get maximum effectiveness (except look at a warrior’s on-demand condition removal and Berserker Stance), whereas with skills like TU there’s a very distinct window of time in which to control the conditions you place upon your opponent, which is significantly easier to do when considering a ranger’s condition removal.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

That’ll require more thought out plays and well-timed skill usage. Warriors will now lose their spammy potential hence rendered underpowered by everyone. People will move to the next fotm which requires less skill and more buttonsmashing with some facerolling.

Then you change the next fotm to be less mindless until you eliminate most/all of the brainless playing options.

Wait.. that would make sense.

Durzlla.6295:

You have an AoE blind, KD, and launch while in the tornado and your health bar doubles, if you’re using your Tornado for 1337 damagez or when the entire team just popped AoE stability i’m sorry you’re using your elite like an idiot and thus getting poor results.

Double health means little when your base survivability is bad. Being subject to every form of effect except what stability counters isn’t too great either. I don’t expect Tornado to kill people in just a few hits, but I wouldn’t mind if it actually deterred them from being near me even if they have stability.

Fiery Greatsword has some really hard hitting skills, not to mention a teammate also gets one, and if that teammate is a ranger, congrats you just created the most borken thing ever because his scales now scale like everyone elses instead of the kittenty scaling with power they have due to “pet taxes”. And if you didn’t know… there’s nothing to stop you from dropping your sword so you can use your weapon skills… i mean kitten if you’re in a 1v1 you still got that other sword laying on the ground that you can pick up when it’s safe to do so…

Ok, so basically what you’re saying is that it’s great for the person I give it to as a temporary source of damage, and that if I want I can leave it laying on the ground as a clear telegraph of my future damage output source. The damage is so easy to dodge on FGS that if you’re fighting somebody who knows how it works you’re pretty much only giving up your weapon skills.

Bad AI, yeah, they are pretty stupid, but one thing they do is spam their AoE buffs, so fire gives you might, earth gives prot, water gives healing, and storm swiftness, not to mention it gives you a meat shield to hide behind if you’re fighting a ranged enemy…

The buffs are minimal and the meatshield aspect is pretty much pointless because their movement patterns are so predictable that it takes no effort to sidestep one. What use is there to be near my Fire Elemental to gain from the aoe might if it has low base HP and will die too fast to accomplish anything? What use is there for my storm elemental if it can’t even be a meatshield/stunbot because of low HP and bad aim? The redundant swiftness isn’t bad enough? Ice elemental has a heal CD of more than 20 seconds iirc and you can’t control it, meaning it could potentially be wasted due to bad AI. Earth elemental has no significant damage, and the only effect worth of note requires you stand near it. In PvP it can pretty much be ignored.

Durzlla.6295:

Also, popping an aura as you are activating Tornado is very effective since it persists in the tornado, so you can use that for some help to survivability.

Even on melee characters I pretty much see Tornado as a free target. Everything it does is on a set interval, it can be blocked (even reflected if you’re getting hit by the lightning etc), dodged, blinded, snared.. I quite literally hate losing all of my skills to gain some kitten effect that has so much counterplay it’s not even funny.

Mathias.9657:

“I swung a stun, I swung a stun again.”

This made me laugh harder than it should have.

tehfoks.5120:

Leuca.5732:

Zelyhn.8069:

I disagree: it is not bad design.
This trait is the best trait we have. We just need more like this.

It’s only good because of what it fixes. Fresh Air would be unnecessary if attunement recharge was set to that of regular weapon swapping.

That would be so broken. Classes with “regular weapon swapping” don’t have access to 4 weapon sets.

Four weapon sets that are balanced for damage around each other instead of having two regular ones. If it’s so OP to have them at 9 seconds why can we do it with Arcana? Everything can be balanced, but the attunement recharge actually gives us access to our skills akin to weapon swapping.

How many people do you see complaining that the 1/2 second recharge of engineer kits is broken? That’s a whole weapon set with no CD as a utility skill.

Too much synergy, blah blah blah.

I doubt a reasonable change like this would ever happen. It’s not like Guardians have this:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/%22Stand_Your_Ground!%22