Guild Wars 2

My guess is that it’s because the seed that pops up is the source of the regen, even though it scales off of your healing power. This is somewhat akin to the Ranger’s Fernhound pet, although that doesn’t scale off of the player’s healing power. The problem is just that you are not the direct source of the regen, so it doesn’t proc your trait.

Daecollo.9578:

Elementalist needs to have traits that focus on 1-2 attunements, and less x/x/x/x/30

You don’t need to make traits that focus on one or two attunements. Just fix the Arcana line. Idk how many times somebody needs to tell you that.

Daecollo.9578:

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

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

Um, what? You really want the entire attunement system scrapped just so you can play one or two elements? The profession’s whole skill/trait library is “balanced” around using all four. Those of us who put significant thought into our perspective on the current state of eles do not want every single skill we have to be buffed, which I would hope you noticed by now if you spent any significant time here. However, coming from somebody who thinks poison doesn’t hard counter Troll Unguent, I don’t know what to think about your opinion on eles.

Mrbig.8019:

There’re tons of optimal builds. Even DPS guard can be viable in high level of play, it’s just more difficult to make it work.

You’ve just addressed your own point. It’s not as easy or as effective, which means it isn’t optimal.

I’m not talking to pre-nerf eles time.

I’m talking about when they buffed Hammer animations and Mace stuns and added zerk stance ( 2 months ago IIRC).

I used to run with Healing surge and Fury signet/dolyak ( same build with less sustain but more spike) and i was able to demolish anybody.

Super surely is not the first one running that build ( or similar builds), we have been running with similar stuff for months.

Yet most of the time nobody would give credit to wars. When in TS with my guildies, when i said that any more buff to wars would have made them ridicolously OP, they would laugh at me.

Now look at them.

I’m sorry your guildies were blissfully unaware of how strong warriors were on the verge of becoming, but that whole power increase was not due to somebody magically discovering that warriors had a hammer and mace.

I disagree.

S/F eles, when built correctly, have tons of survivability.

You can build for double arcane shield ( it’s not really needed anyway), you have magnetic shield which is almost a global condi removal every 25 secs + a projectile reflection.

Also obsidian flesh.

Also swirling winds.

Ether renewal grants you very consinstent healing and condi removal, so you can not care about points in water and go glass

Fresh air gives you good sustained damage and great burst.

Go figure the build out by yourself.

If you don’t, i’ll give you some advice: 20-30-0-0-20 or 0-30-20-0-20 are good examples, you would also grant AoE stability every 10 secs, you know.

S/F eles that build for any long-term survivability give up a significant portion of their damage, which actually isn’t that great when compared to other weapon sets due to /focus having no damage and only one form of cc. We can take your two example trait setups as examples.

In the first one, you have no access to earth/water lines, and have sacrificed Evasive Arcana, meaning your condition removal is tied only to Ether Renewal and Magnetic Wave, with the former being extremely easy to read and your exclusive source of healing. Unless your opponent has no knowledge of how your skills work, it will take them pretty much no effort to wait for your main heal (since you have no secondary healing from traits) to either finish, or wait for it to time an interrupt, putting your only heal (barring water trident) on full cooldown. A build with that little defense probably won’t have defensive utilities either in an effort to maximize damage, but even if it does, those utilities are on such high CD that you literally have to be attacking a target who is just as squishy and has no active defense to come out victorious in an engagement, assuming you are at similar skill levels. Focus only really specializes in ranged defense, and only against projectiles. Your active defenses mean nothing to anybody attacking you in melee if your Arcane Shield(s) is not up, which is a pathetic excuse for a stunbreak with its 75 second recharge.

In the second build, you have no innate power gained from traits, and your ability to stack might is entirely reliant on using Flamewall if you are not using sigil of battle. This method of might stacking is inefficient because Flamewall has an extremely small area for you to gain might with and hit your foe at the same time. With this build (and to some degree all s/f builds except condition), your damage is reliant on keeping Air damage uptime high while supplementing with Fire. However, your lower damage output (even with Fresh Air) is most likely only going to significantly pressure the squishiest of people provided they know how to deal with the one hard cc /focus has. You still have no Water investment or Evasive Arcana, which essentially lumps your healing in the same boat as the first build unless you attune to earth every time you cast Ether Renewal, which makes your build exceedingly predictable and even further messes up a Fresh Air rotation.

It’s unfortunate that so many people are taken surprise by Fresh Air, because it’s really only a slight increase to your total overall dps.

Dirame.8521:

Other maps are pretty much competitions for the secondary objectives as well so, I don’t see your point. Forest is like that, Temple is like that, BoK is like that.

There’s a huge difference between Skyhammer and other objective maps, being that the hammer is always there, and cannot be destroyed. It’s almost a cap point of its own.

In Forest, when somebody kills Chieftan/Svanir, that battle is over, for the time being. In temple, when somebody successfully gets Tranquility, everybody moves on to the main objective. In Khylo, you have a treb that can be destroyed/repaired, which adds an element of interest in that you don’t know if the teams will actually try to use treb play or simply trade and then go back to capping.

Are the other maps perfect? No, and Conquest as a game design without these other objectives would still need a lot of work. However, they are significantly better than Skyhammer.

I really like your pet command ideas. I think if more of the ranger’s skills had some pet related utility like that, they could afford to shift pets to a much more utility based role and increase the scaling on our weapons like we need.

However, you would really have to make each effect small if they’re going to be that common, to avoid pets becoming utility powerhouses and allowing rangers to just faceroll for damage.

I kind of imagined a staff ranger having a combination of 300-600 range skills that go between aoe melee and slightly ranged utility.

Bsgapollo.5364:

fugazi.5139:

Ok. NObody good ever complained about stealth. ONly noname kittenters.

That’s why all top tier teams say/said it’s unbalanced?

There’s not really much separating top tier from everybody else with common sense; that’s kind of an appeal to authority. Stealth isn’t unbalanced in the damage/point-holding sense. It just lacks the counterplay to be fun to play against due to ease-of-access and lack of repercussions for thieves messing up. To give you a bit of some metaphoric hyperbole, imagine taking stealth even further. The thief can literally pop into stealth anytime they want (aside from revealed debuff) but does even less damage. Is this balanced? Not by a longshot; nobody wants to fight that and it’s boring as hell because you’ll never do anything significant to each other no matter how skilled you are, but it’s not breaking the game from a competitive standpoint because it lacks a sort of global viability.

TL;DR- Is stealth broken? Yes. Is it wrecking the meta of this game? It’s kind of too by-itself to really have an impact either way until it’s completely reworked.

Dirame.8521:

Every class has a way to knock or pull people off so, I don’t think it’s a big deal but I do believe the Skyhammer should be the one to break the flooring and the walls open for people to take advantage of those rather than people breaking it themselves.

That will just turn the map into a competition of which team has a better suited person for knocking somebody out the skyhammer pit. It means that if maps are randomized that there will always be a tendency for teams to have heavy CC, making the map inherently bad for encouraging a fluid TPvP meta. We already have trebuchets and repair kits in Khylo; this was an unnecessary map that I believe could have had its development time put towards the other modes Anet has vaguely mentioned.

Mrbig.8019:

What exactly are those reasons ?

Depends on what makes the build less than optimal for most styles of play. I’m assuming you know that’s kind of a given. It’s easy to get beaten up by a niche build that you’ve never seen before if you have no idea what to expect, but that doesn’t make the build particularly great for much by default. It just means the person caught you off guard, was a better player, etc.

When i used to play hammer-longbow ( note, basically the same build people bash for being OP with the only difference being signet of fury instead of dolyak) ANYONE would ask me to go back to my thief.

I used to say wars were strong and didn’t need any serious buff. They laughed at me.

Look at wars now, just look at them.

Wars were weak by comparison. Now they’re OP by comparison. Your build back then wasn’t going to touch a prenerf ele who knew what they were doing.

Also, many of us are quite aware that Anet’s policy for balance often goes astray..

What is stopping people from using those builds is tunnel vision.

Rupt mesmer, S/F burst eles, power ranger and similars are all viable and strong, and needs very little to be on par with common OP builds.

As soon as they shave OP builds ( S/D thief, necros and wars among all) they will be godlike like they should ( being mostly builds with high skill cap) .

Power ranger-guard-necro are the only one that should be looked at for buffs (AIMED ONES, not ridicolous stuff such burning was for necros) because if you do give too much to builds already in a decent spot ( such DPS guards) they will become OP like necros and wars.

Mesmer and eles especially are in a very good state, it’s S/D thief ( which holds them back) which should be nerfed ( again , AIMED nerfs).

No, what is stopping people from using those builds is a lack of global efficiency. S/F burst for example is an extremely niche build with only one skill for innate survivability. The set lacks any consistent sustain after blowing its first round of heals and has no mobility whatsoever. Anything with a bit of durability and/or well-timed dodges will completely wreck this kind of ele because it can’t keep up if its damage fails to kill in the first round, and its offhand lacks any significant pressure skills to keep an attacker at bay after dealing its primary damage. Which could bring me to the point of how eles are actually in a terrible state outside of a meta balance perspective, but I’d highly encourage you to take a look at some of the less-whiny threads on the related forum, which discuss design flaws with the class.

I also don’t understand how you can think your bolded statement is true. There is so much in this game that is below what basic operating level has come to be known as e.g. myriad traits/entire traitlines, as well as entire weapon sets for some, and a vast number of utility skills. None of these categories are in any way limited to the professions/specialties you mentioned.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Exactly! There is so much potential in every profession. Yes, balance tweaks are needed, but nothing like what the last few weeks’ threads would have you believe.

The potential is there, but the design/current balance prevents it from taking form, which is effectively making it nonexistent for the time being. It would take a massive overhaul of the game to make every traitline/weapon/utility skill have at least some degree of viability when compared to each other.

It doesn’t break the game per say but it’s really stupid to watch. I end up leaving extended fights with those kinds of thieves because I don’t have the patience for them.

Stealth (if you’re going to have it at all) should be very infrequent and more consequential.

Corian.4068:

What don’t you like about it? Getting knocked off?

Don’t even go there. The map is obviously much easier for certain professions to traverse.

AydenStar.4216:

The speculated Healing Spring change might up the door to?

Blast Finisher on Maul?

GS still doesn’t need a blast finisher. Won’t solve the problems the weapon has.

zencow.3651:

Names copied from Gw1.

Fire:
4 – Flamewall replaced with Bed of Coals: 1 second burning damage coefficient of 0.1 per second like Flamewall, double effect against stationary foes. Circular 8 second duration fire field. Radius of 360. Can reuse the destroyer’s cracked earth animation.

Keeping the damage low but make it larger so it actually hits things. The conditional effect would reward comboing.

5 – Fire Shield replaced with Incendiary Bonds: Throw chains of fire at nearby foes. After 3 seconds, struck foes are inflicted with 3 seconds of immobilize and burning. Damage coefficient of 0.5 on hit and on end effect. Can reuse Lava Chain’s animations.

QoL CC to allow you to combo without Gale being the ONLY possible way of landing Dragon’s Tooth without having to resort to Signet of Earth and for use as an escape tool.

Water:
4 – Freezing Gust renamed to Winters Embrace, added functionality: now also inflicts 3 stacks of Torment for 10 seconds.

Adds abit of damage to make it feel more powerful and be more synergistic with Comet, that only dazes and not stuns and interact with Bed of Coals to create a do I stop or do I run situation.

Air:
4 – Swirling Winds – added functionality: now also causes knock-back on cast.

As much as I love swirling winds, it’s totally useless since rangers could simply swap to sword and mash your face so it needs abit more than purely projectile absorption.

5 – Gale – reverted the knock-down duration to 3 seconds.

Or they could standardize it with updraft an lower it’s CD to 40s, but the original 3 seconds knock-down was what made Gale distinct. With other proffessions having their stuns buffed to 3 sec, Warrior’s Skull Crack and Mesmer’s Sig of Domination, I don’t see why ele wasn’t treated with as much love.

As a GW1 veteran I love, love, love your Fire Magic references, but I think it’d be more likely for them to alter functions of existing skills rather than creating entirely new ones, especially with Fire Shield due to your change removing our ability to have an aura from every element on a weapon. It’s a thematic discrepancy I doubt Anet would allow to happen.

I also like your change to Swirling Winds as a way to give Focus some CC lock (though it would probably be OP for point control) but I dislike putting all our significant CC in one element; it makes it rather predictable. I also don’t want to see them up the cast time to telegraph a knockback when I’m using it primarily for its duration function, which I want immediately. You could also solve the problem it poses as a purely ranged-defense skill by buffing Shield of Fire to return damage upon attacking, or making Flame Wall do significant damage for crossing it, which would serve the dual purpose of making Fire Attunement useful while rounding out the set’s different ranges of control.

Parktou.4263:

Flamewall works pretty well, most people try to use it in conjunction with the blast finishers to stack might which you CAN do, but I prefer to use it before I switch into earth attunement. Once your in Earth you can use Rock Barrier’s Hurl ability to send 5 physical projectile combo finishers through the fire field, stacking burning for 5 secs or more. I run S/F condition build and I won’t lie and say it isn’t tricky or hard to get everything to line up right but it’s certainly possible

Ring of Fire can be used for the same purpose, and it has superior damage+only requires somebody passing over it once to apply 5 seconds of burning. It’s also a much bigger field, making it substantially easier for you to get both its offensive and team-utility effects.

The fact that you’re admitting that it’s hard just to get things lined up to use a combo that would otherwise be intuitive for your set says something’s up.

I use Comet in water before switching back to fire and dropping a DT. WHEN I land it, it’s pretty devastating and even though it isn’t a great ability I still use freezing gust, I try to time it when a heal is about to come available or after they burn some big abilities.

Comet doesn’t actually help DT to land unless they’re immobilized and you’re trying to daze their condition removal, which is a pretty rare occurrence and even more unlikely if you’re running a condition build, since it’d be more effective just to land two auto attacks in Fire. However, we should address why Comet falls short in general. It has a really small AoE for an effect that’s really only useful if you get lucky. It takes a marginal amount of skill to know when a heal is coming up, but your timing cannot go astray at all because of Comet’s delay. Comet also lacks the ability to interrupt key mobility skills because of said delay, further constraining its possible uses when it should have more. Its delay+foe-targeted nature also means that they must be locked in Flame Wall for a significant amount of time for you to get the full synergy that would be suggested.

You’re admitting Freezing Gust isn’t great so I don’t need to elaborate on that.

Fire shiled is nice foe when multiple players are training you and when you do it right you can use it like retaliation/confusion to either hurt them when they attack you or prevent them from attacking you until it ends(5 sec duration). People also seem to glance over the might stacking ability of Fire Shield, if you’re in a group and multiple people target you and you pop it, your going to be rolling in might.

Everything has a use in at least 3 situations, IMO.

Comparing Fire Shield to retaliation is almost comical because its effect has an internal cd and doesn’t directly scale with any stat but condition damage, which is extremely unreliable on an ele. People aren’t glancing over the might Fire Shield offers; the trade-off to get hit that many times when you are in the lowest armor/max health bracket just isn’t worth it. Its internal CD, while necessary to balance the might stacks, again makes this an insignificant skill to punish your foe with because they can get in more quick hits than you can deal back out with might-boosted damage. You are only going to gain significant might if you are consistently hit throughout the entire duration, which is not a feasible situation on an elementalist for aforementioned reasons.

histerico.6153:

I’d like to see air 4 become a lightning field for it’s duration. There are not enough of those in the game.

It’s actually one of the strongest skills in the game for its recharge. It doesn’t need anything else. The area it affects bigger than an entire cap point and the only thing it won’t neutralize is treb shots/unblockable attacks, which aren’t that common.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Leuca.5732:

What build haven’t you seen?

I have seen it now The point of the thread isn’t to post new/interesting builds, it’s to say that new and interesting builds are possible.

It’s not particularly difficult to explain what killed you now, is it?

Example: This S/F ele bursted me down with what I think was a Fresh Air build.

Chances are the build you died to is not really that new; it’s just uncommonly seen for one reason or another.

RyuDragnier.9476:

I don’t think anybody cared too much about it in sPvP. But in Dungeons and fractals, that vigor saved lives. WvW…well, it COULD help, but most of the time not, because of ZvZ combat.

I think there might be something else wrong with what your team is doing if you need healing spring to get through dungeons because of the vigor.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Leuca.5732:

Top tier builds will be “invented” when garbage skills get buffs and OP skills get toned down. We already have top tier builds right now. Believe it or not you’re actually a lot more limited than the game advertises in terms of efficacy.

And yet I got flattened in by a build I had never even seen before just the other day, using some utilities that most people of that profession are trying to get buffed because they don’t think they’re powerful enough—while this dude was 100% carrying his team. I’m not the greatest player in the world but this was a top-tier solo queue match with player ranks between probably about 50 and 350.

Again, balance isn’t perfect, but there’s more depth here than we’re realizing.

What build haven’t you seen?

Top tier builds will be “invented” when garbage skills get buffs and OP skills get toned down. We already have top tier builds right now. Believe it or not you’re actually a lot more limited than the game advertises in terms of efficacy.

It’s often helpful to know what is causing the mobility. What professions are you facing that you have this trouble with?

ElQuebecois.4691:

cheshirefox.7026:

cuz they are too weak to pull back the string.. b’doom cheee >_>

can you write this in english please?

Can you capitalize the first letter of your sentence please? Don’t forget to capitalize the first letter of proper nouns as well.

Avead.5760:

I think that idea is the perfect medium so that engis wont cry we get to their territory and also have conjures be actual support weapons
I dont see why making them something only the elementalist gets is a good idea.Its very selfish and will help people that play only solo..in an mmo

That’s funny, because engineers are already somewhat in our territory, only they don’t have quite as many “sets”, but those sets lack any recharge penalty for swapping.

Elementalists already spread plenty of boons; the only use their conjures really have is with the Ice Bow and FGS for taking out occasional immobile targets with aoe, and the Lightning Hammer for people who insist that it’s just the best dps evarrr. I’m not sure why you’d call a switch like I mentioned selfish when people will actually call you useless for not bringing either of those skills in some PvE areas, which is absolutely untrue. The ele is an inherently un-selfish class because of how its aoe works; reworking conjures won’t change that and will open up myriad possibilities for theorycrafting, especially in WvW and PvP where conjures are largely ignored.

Even WvW needs some degree of balance. This rune didn’t help at all. If you add food to this your confusion uptime is pretty much game-breaking.

FrownyClown.8402:

Fire elemental will die.
Water elemental will fade away in the water.
Air Elemental will cease to exist since air cannot be in water.
Earth elemental will sink to the ocean floor.
Idea debunked.

Lava elemental, glacier elemental, lightning elemental, murky elemental.

Make it similar to engineer kits but put a longer recharge on activating it again once you swap out. This will reduce ice bow abuse in PvE since it will only be available to the elementalist, but will increase their available utility and assist with the fact that we’re limited to one weapon set with predictable spells.

DiogoSilva.7089:

This also confirms that the leaked patch notes are incomplete.

This.

It seemed like a small list considering everything Anet has said to try and patch things up a bit since PAX ended.

Parktou.4263:

I like it the way it is actually, only thing I would want is Focus Water #5 to not have a delay like Dragons tooth, or make it a targetable AoE. Focus can be pretty strong, particularly against ranged.

What significant use do you get out of Fire/Water?

AikijinX.6258:

I would love unload to be able to shoot the ground to have a sort of a leap blast finisher. Design it sorta of like heartseeker.

We already have enough problems with thieves spamming HS to get long stealth durations.

I really wouldn’t take Glyph of Storms. It won’t do much in WvW and even in PvE you’re better off just grabbing faster-recharging utility.

From a trait perspective, if you’re looking for extra survivability it’s hard to pass up having 15 water, which will probably do more for you than Earth’s Embrace in the long run. Since you seem to want the extra damage from Stone Splinters, I’d just go 0/10/10/20/30 and grab some cantrip recharge to get your utilities up faster. It gives you more access to the defense you have complete control over and improves your healing without sacrificing your damage.

I guess the rest of it is really up to preference. I prefer to have a slightly higher base power level, but I don’t use battle sigils right now so that will definitely make up for it in any extended fight.

Unload would be pretty interesting if it also made you dash (or move a bit faster) in the direction you are running if you aren’t standing still. Add some mobility/defense to the set without breaking it with spammed evades, etc.

Blimm.5028:

After tons of ranting, crying, cursing and even more of other stuff I will not utter here, i discovered that the meta development makes 100% sense.

This is kind of a meaningless statement. Meta development inherently makes sense because it’s basically players gravitating towards numerically superior builds. What doesn’t always make sense are the changes that lead up to it, i.e. adding Dhuumfire/Torment to a game that was already moving into a condi meta after burst builds were nerfed.

I’m only going to address the beginning of your post because it’s going a bit awry in terms of addressing the problem you think would arise.

kobi.5236:

Lets buff the more op clases even are bit more by letting people use 2 sigill´s on 2hand weapons , this change would have a crazy huge amount of change in pve and pvp . 2hand specs are strong enough no need to buff them anymore*

Many two-handed weapons are not as effective as others, and some are, but this has pretty much nothing to do with sigils. Those weapons would still be pretty much as effective or otherwise without sigils. The problem you are trying to solve lies in the weapons themselves, from a balance perspective that doesn’t involve calculating sigils in the equation (with a very small list of exceptions e.g. sigil of paralyzation) If those weapons were appropriately toned up or down as needed, the two-sigil change would have minimal impact on balance and would be a small quality-of-life fix.

Zeon.8239:

Oh, and, in addition to making it so that players are revealed when they miss attacks during stealth, I think they should be removed from stealth if they are hit during it.

Leaving that suggestion as it is would make thieves a bit too weak, imo, so I also suggest that every time someone enters stealth, they gain a buff (that lasts 2 seconds or so; 3 seems a bit much) that prevents them from being removed from stealth if they’re hit while the buff is up. That way you don’t get autodragged out of stealth right after casting it.

They don’t need to be revealed on hit. What needs to be toned down is blind spam so that you can actually hit them while they’re stealthed. You should be rewarded for knowing where your opponent is, but not that much.

Alternatively, if a function could be implemented that made your translucent appearance pulse while attacking during stealth, with a full reveal only applying on a successful hit, that would be interesting to see.

There just shouldn’t be as many stuns, stunbreaks, or sources of stability in this game.

If more runes were on par with Melandru/Lyssa/etc as Cyhann stated, you’d add a lot more interest to build crafting.

I was expecting a lot more about his opinion on the current meta. From a viewer perspective, this was only informative if you have no current knowledge of how the game works right now.

Appreciate the effort though; good luck with your channel!

Knote.2904:

Doomsayer.8250:

I like most of these changes, specifically the changes to Air, and Ice Spike.

What about adding a knockdown to Unsteady Ground, as well as applying cripple, though? Thematically it fits (if the ground is unsteady, wouldn’t it be likely to make one fall over if they run over it), it would add offensive and defensive capabilities, but the cripple would stop it being completed negated by Stability.

Gust definitely needs some love. I’m most in favour of changing it to a cone attack. As mentioned previoulys, having it work like Temporal Curtain would cause way too much trouble with people being able to stack Eruption and Ice Spike that basically becomes unavoidable.

I thought about knockdown for Unsteady Ground, but then it becomes redundant when you already have Static Field that essentially does the same CC aoe denial, and Air is supposed to be about control and Earth about defense/conditions.

I also thought about making Unsteady Ground act like Staff Guardians #5 skill, the wall. What’s funny is waaay back in early early beta, when I first saw the skill, I actually thought that’s what it did, maybe I watched a video that had it, and it seemed like that’s how it functioned.

And I don’t think Vortex would be overpowered combo’d with our aoe’s, not if it’s well telegraphed, say a 1 – 1.5 second cast time, and during it there was an obvious swirling animation, just like Curtain is now telegraphed 1 second in advance. People would also have to be NEAR the aoe before it detonates and could easily avoid the combo altogether, just like people can avoid Churning Earth/Lightning Flash combo.

Unsteady Ground in GW1 had a conditional KD effect. :P

Actually, it’d be a huge improvement if Unsteady Ground was a circular aoe cripple instead of a line.

Ian Kennedy.4563:

Forgive my horrible grammar.

Your grammar is not what I’m worried about. A large number of people experiment with myriad stat combinations, but our traitlines don’t come close to offering us enough numerically unless we run certain numbers in certain traits, with only a little room for variation. It’s got to do with the requirement of Water/Arcana for mere survival combined with inefficient damage traitlines and badly placed traits. The fact that our core function requires a traitline to even be competitive says a lot about the design of he class.

mjharrison.3209:

fire #4, fire #5, water #4, and air #4 are all very lacklustre.

I’ve always thought water #4 should be a 600 leap with a chill.

Focus needs a mobility skill.

Air 4 is absolutely amazing. 6 seconds of huge aoe projectile nullification is just really good for its recharge. Honestly Air 5 is in a worse state just because of recharge.

I don’t think focus needs mobility if it actually gets to a point where it can area control efficiently like it should. However, it needs a lot of work to get there.

Knote.2904:

I suppose a slight reduction in the delay would be fine, but I’m telling you if they reduced Eruption Anet would most definately slap it with a dmg nerf, which would make me sad. It would be fine if Unsteady Ground got some access to dmg conditions maybe.

Also the Vortex change to Gust would be good for getting off an almost guaranteed Eruption, but that’s also unlikely to happen, just imagine it for a second though, queue Ice Spike/Eruption then just suck everyone into it…. boom.

I agree with you that they probably would lower the damage but I’m not getting the reasoning, kind of like how they added torment to the game.

Tei.1704:

I feel like this is a joke, but I’ll respond to it seriously anyway.

3% more damage in the power line of the profession that deals the most power-based damage is worth more than 10% more damage in the toughness line of the elementalist.

He thinks warriors are pretty much balanced as-is.

Please, no weapons with crazy visual effects. The overload of spell effects is bad enough.

Not right now it’s not. Warriors are really strong right now.

emikochan.8504:

it’s a burst trait like the +damage when above 90% health.

Except it’s in the toughness/condition damage line at the Grandmaster tier. Nothing about this trait is worth the investment. You’d get significantly better burst by utilizing other trait lines, and the defense you’d get from grabbing this trait can’t make up for that with the current state of things.

Burnfall.9573:

Dante.1508:

I only have one request.

Give rangers the option to remove pets completely, that’s all i ask for..

Exactly.

Massive overhaul to make them utility-based, tougher, and have BM investment decrease the CD on their abilities. Then just change the way their skills operate so that they at least attempt to follow their target with offensive skills and don’t attempt to get in range of a foe for defensive skills.

Blimm.5028:

Blast finishers. Also mashing the enemy necros face while being invulnerable helps the team a lot.
But I see your point. But dagger offhand is either too squishy and has no support or is unable to melt someone.
Only reasonable support on ele comes from staff (rofl, REASONABLE)

Blast finishers aren’t really something that sets it apart. Swirling Winds is a total game-changer. If Fire/Water were brought up to par, focus would probably start actually seeing competitive play with area denial and great defense-into-offense abilities. Assuming of course conditions are brought in line.

I’ve been using focus for some time now and I really enjoy it, but I when I’m fighting a stupid healing signet warrior and I know my offhand is what’s keeping me from killing him because the skills aren’t doing anything, it’s annoying as hell.

natsos.3692:

Nugget.8031:

Ranger Wilderness Survival-

-Increases endurance regeneration by 50%.
-You and your pet gain 2 seconds of protection when you dodge roll.

The first one is nowhere near useless, its bathasz.
As for the second one protection could be 3 seconds and it would be great, now its just a bit underwhelming.

It’s only underwhelming because the protection applies as you start dodging and not when you finish, in an attempt to more efficiently give your pet damage reduction. However, your pet would really end up getting the same mitigation either way.

Daecollo.9578:

Warrior Vitality Line…

Stick and Move (3% Damage bonus on a 25 trait!)
Versatile Power (1 Stack of Might on a 25 trait.. lol.)

Gosh, it must be so awful stacking % damage with your sigil or getting a free stack of might every 5 seconds.

Knote.2904:

I’m actually a huge fan of the high risk/high reward on Eruption always have been, if they reduced the delay they would be forced to nerf the dmg output and I wouldn’t like that personally.

Ice Spike needs something though, it’s basically Eruption’s loser little brother, personally I would just like having to do a lot more dmg so it’s actually threatening, it’s telegraphed well enough and is the ONLY dmg in water attunement, so yeah.

They wouldn’t really have to lower the damage if they reduced the delay by a bit, because it’s still a really obvious telegraph even if you take it from 3 to 2 seconds. That’s ample time to decide if you want to dodge it or not.

If Ice Spike also got a delay reduction, you’d be hitting it much more often, removing the necessity to really add anything else. Staff’s main issue is skills actually landing, regardless of how skilled you are with the weapon. When they land, people feel their effects to some degree regardless of their stats. By reducing some of the delays on skill effects, you keep the counterplay of being able to dodge them by paying attention but remove the counterplay of just wailing away at you while the skill ticks away. There’s not much risk for your foe if you cast Eruption in an attempt to discourage an attack, especially if they’re already in your face; that’s a huge chunk of time for them to be damaging you and Shockwave’s immobilize doesn’t last long enough unless you wait a full second to use it or have a huge amount of condition duration increase.