Guild Wars 2

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Lostwingman.5034:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

That would be WAY too hard, having to make a WHOLE other set of attunement skills for each weapon?

“independent of what weapon you are equipped with”
That means what weapon you are equipped with doesn’t matter, it will be the same skills.

That would be even harder considering Staff, Scepter and Dagger are all different range. How would the range of these skills be decided?

No it wouldn’t. You would mix them with 1 melee range one and one long ranged one to create range flexibility.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

That would be WAY too hard, having to make a WHOLE other set of attunement skills for each weapon?

“independent of what weapon you are equipped with”
That means what weapon you are equipped with doesn’t matter, it will be the same skills.

ThiBash.5634:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

I can see us ending in a WORSE state than we are now

The one thing I’m anxious about is that they’ll exchange the current rapid attunement cycling for something slower, moe akin to weapon swapping ‘because the masses prefer that’.

Seriously, I’d take a 25% damage nerf if they’ll keep Evasive Arcana and attunement field/finisher combos the way they are now on staff.

I’d rather we get both.
Ditch elemental surge with a “Deep Attunement” trait. For example, if in Water and you have “Deep Attunement” you can tap F2 to enter deeper into the elements under Water. You could then have a “Water” set of weapon skills and an “Ice” set of weapon skills independent of what weapon you are equipped with that you swap between using the “`” button we almost never use. To leave you would hit F2 again to return to the normal water skills and then rotate around per usual.
Or you could make that a flavor in general of putting 30 points in a line. Like 30 in water would give you that option.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Lostwingman.5034:

They are setting us up to nerf us even harder down the line.
You know, no fun to hit someone when they are already down and all that.
/paranoia

…Is it still Paranoia if you are right? I can see us ending in a WORSE state than we are now if they over buff us and we become the new Warrior broken class. We do need buffs, but rather just tweaks and little improvements here and there. We don’t need huge changes or anything.

Yea…but
#elepocalypse
ids habbening gaiz, run

Proven.2854:

I’m in the camp of keeping the current system. The issue I see with the suggested changes is that come down to, “I don’t want my teammates being a drawback to me!” But that ignores the fact that those same teammates are often trying to help you. It’s a coordination problem.

That’s silly, they aren’t “trying to help you”. They are trying to pull off their own combos in their own rotations because that is individually what their builds are made for. A hammer guardian is spamming light fields and canceling ele fire fields because it is part of his auto-attack. A staff ele is spamming fire fields (lava font) because that has his best damage against stationary targets. A pistol off hand thief drops smoke fields from black powder because it is how they maintain their survivability.

The idea behind combos is getting the most out of the limited number of skills we have to work with. Not necessarily teamwork as they require a huge investment of coordination and planning to pull off without stepping on each others toes.

They are setting us up to nerf us even harder down the line.
You know, no fun to hit someone when they are already down and all that.
/paranoia

Offhand dagger also brings in bigger burst damage skills like Firegrab and Churning Earth (even if they can be awkward to get used to I enjoy the big numbers). It also has access to one of our better fire fields in Ring of Fire.

Engineers don’t weapon swap either, they get their range flexibility from kits.
We have to rely on conjures if we are going to do that in combat but they are really awkward to pull out.

Why would you buy the recipe before you are even close to the level required for using it?

LivingLegend.6528:

Thaddeus.4891:

Fresh air is a popular build, but its a not good pve build. Its a sPvP build.

Now, i don’t play my ele in sPvp so i can’t say if it a good sPvP build or not. But anyway, since you are talking about your levl 70 Ele, that probably mean you are playing in PvE.

Scepter/Dagger have a terrible DPS, and should not use as your main weapon in PvE. Right now there is 3 family of build for the Ele PvE.

Staff : Highest personally DPS, easiest to play. You stay in fire and spam laval front. The trait are 30/20/10/10/0 or 30/10/10/10/10.

S/F or S/D : High DPS, harder to play, stack might like crazy for your party. You gonna have to switch between pretty much all attunements to stack might, then DPS in water with your Light Hammer. Trait vary a lot for that one : 25/10/10/25/0 or 30/10/10/20/0 or 10/25/10/25/0 and a lot more depending on what you want to focus (DPS, Fury, Vulnerability, etc).

D/F : A good all around build. Its nice for solo, fractals and give access to survivability skills since the first two build are really squishy. The Trait : 30/30/10/0/0.

Of course your gear will affect a lot your DPS. But for PvE the Elementalist have the highest potentiel DPS of the game and by far. The problem is that reach the highest DPS is almost impossible. Too many requirements to get all the damage modifier. The enemy need to burn, have vulnerability, be at 33% HP, without a range of 600, you need to be at 90% HP and be in water attunement. This is achievable, but is hard as hell to keep for a long time.

What about D/D and just curious how do you guys cope with short range to long range and vice verse do you guys just change to staff? Since ele can only equip 1 wpn set

I mostly ran D/D when I did Fractals and Dungeons, I’d just swap to staff when I knew I’d have issues with close range.

Nowadays I go full “don’t wanna open my inventory” and run staff with Lightning Hammers for pug runs.

Duran.3196:

I have to say I dont like Fresh Air, tried it out, but the attunement recharge solely on air is not justifying for a 30 point trait in my eyes.

Putting 20 into arcana gives you some nice boon play with it though, plus constant fury once a fight is on without having to worry about landing blast finishers on fire fields.
It’s more about rolling through various attunements back and forth constantly for the handful of ~15sec or less attacks and stringing them together with Air’s strong AA and lightning strike.

ThiBash.5634:

blakdoxa.7520:

I think Fresh Air could work well with One with Air and Aeromancer’s Alacrity. In fact I might switch out Bolt to the Heart for AA. But on DD I personally don’t see it making much a difference.

The main thing would be the free extra lightning bolts every 5 seconds instead of 10. Which are 900 range, something D/D might be able to use. It works better on scepter though, because that has low recharge skills to combine it with.

I would consider switching to scepter for it but I like lightning whips cleave too much.

What if the effect of Fire Shield was changed to be offensive, burning and giving might when you attack instead of currently requiring the user to be struck?

Connect physical size to physical strength.
Suddenly Asura are the weak molerats they are.

I like the idea of Scarlet, I like that a lot. Not as big a fan of the implementation and pacing.

Argodis.2514:

I’ve level a Thief, Necro, Engineer, and Guardian to level 80.

However, my elementalist is level 50 and I die 10x more than I did with any other class. The class seems to die so easily but doesn’t do a ton of damage to make up for it like the Thief class. Every dynamic event I have to fight for my life if more than one enemy is involved.

I primarily use Staff sometimes switching to scepter. The only time I do a lot of damage is if I take the time to stack Might or used a conjured weapon.

I wanted to play a long ranged mage but Elementalist just isn’t fun at all. I may just quit and start a Mesmer. Does Elementalist become better at later levels or am I doing something wrong.

Range is your thing? Then throw as much as you can in fire and blasting staff (Arcane) and drop dem lava fonts with staff fire 2.

Looks pretty standard issue but I think people usually would use Mist Form instead of Cleansing Flame since you are getting cleanses everytime you give yourself regen.

Da Beetus.1275:

Lostwingman is correct, however there is an additional benefit to crafting. You are able to gain 10 levels from the experience that crafting a single profession to max level.

And max level is 500, honestly, it’s less time and resource consuming to level using Queensdale champ trains or the current LA events.

Crafting only really matters if you want Ascended weapons and armor as it is the only way to acquire those. Assuming you are new to the game, Ascended gear is the highest level gear (same stats as Legendary IIRC). If that’s really the way you want to go, pick up tailoring and artificing unless you know you really really want to do dual daggers then go weaponsmithing.

It would be extremely negligent if they didn’t save the original Lion’s Arch, Kessex, etc.

This was pretty much always sitting at the back of my head when they talked about the LS and started making permanent changes. They might have made a mistake making the PS so connected to a certain time frame that no longer exists in game.

I’m just going to finish leveling my Guardian and call it day.

juno.1840:

Wintel.4873:

juno.1840:

Staff ele brings a lot of versatility to a team

No, bringing versatility and support is the job of guardians, warriors, engineers, mesmers, etc. They do that drastically better than Ele’s.

You probably think that way from playing fire-bot too long

Dropping the odd field is nowhere near as effective as killing things quickly.
No.
where.
Close.
There is a reason glass cannon is the dungeon meta.

You could have conjures act like kits but still drop them.
Just have it where if you have a conjure out you can summon another conjure dropping the one you are currently holding at your feet and locking your conjure utility until one of them disappears.
Wow, much hard, so difficult, very complex.

juno.1840:

guanlongwucaii.3162:

juno.1840:

scerevisiae.1972:

glass cannonish staff + signet of earth for the immob. use earth #4/#5 when SoE is down.

don’t bother switching attunements in PVE, it’s not worth the effort — you’ll just end up killing stuff way slower.

just stay in fire and nuke.

Disagree on the “don’t bother switching attunements”. If you want to be the worst ele you can be at level 80, then by all means follow that advice. However you should learn to play smart, and then practice playing smart. Leveling is the training ground to learn the smart behaviors. Otherwise you get to 80 and do the same stupid stuff and your team mates think “this is the worst ele ever”.

you shouldn’t be switching attunements from fire as a staff ele because all the other staff skills are pretty garbage for DPS. and yes, DPS is what you (and every other party member) should be focusing on in a dungeon. the inability to swap attunements is probably the biggest disadvantage to the staff build, which can provide among the highest DPS in-game.

if you want a more flexible build with regards to attunement swapping dagger/focus fresh air builds are probably better.

I’ll make sure I never run a dungeon with you — an ele that stays only in fire attune is not an ele I want in my team. You can play that brain-dead style if you want, but you are not doing your mates any favors.

Yeah that sounds harsh, but if DPS was your only role, then why are you playing a staff ele?

Did you not read what he said or are just doing it selectively to have a flimsy argument? The most important thing in dungeon clears is dps and dodging. In other weapon sets for ele’s swapping attunements constantly improves dps, it does not however do that in fire where your dps is built around lava font spam.

He even mentions that there are other builds that play better to that naming one.

And actually, no one wants the dead weight running around trying to CC and cleanse when dps will get you through the engagement with much more survivability (from not having to drag out fights).

This happens so much in pugs it is mind numbing…
I stopped bothering with doing Ele combos in pug runs because of it.

For easy?
Staff then Lightning Hammer when you hit 40.
Nothing is easier than 10 in fire and everything else in water and arcane with LH spam.

Hmmm, my main issue with character progression has more to do with the progression itself.
What I mean is I wish as part of our “personal” story we went on quests, missions, and adventures to learn new skills in our professions. Which on that note I wish there were more skills and utilities, even on individual weapons. I’m not sure which would be more balanced, to have extra skills locked to a position on the skill bar (so if you wanted to swap Sword 3 on Guardian with another skill it would be skills only available to sword 3) or to have the entire set itself swappable. Either way, I still with there were more skills and utilities that we acquired by playing our characters through something.

Ascended crafting is a painful painful experience. It is so hard leveling it up, not to mention expensive unless you want to farm Oris and Ancients all day everyday for a month. Once you get to 500 crafting it isn’t that bad but man going from 400-500 was such a terrible experience that I’ve decided to never do it again. Which means I’m limited to only ever having ascended weapons a weaponsmith can make…sigh. That’s not very horizontal progression friendly. If they are going to be that difficult to get they should probably have swappable stats like legendaries. Although I think the better solution is to create more avenues of acquiring.

That’s all I got off the top of my head…

On this note, anyone else notice the creepy Quaggan dialogue behind the tent?

MarzAttakz.9608:

… but it seems like more and more Elementalists are theory crafting some strange builds.

We just had a large balance changing patch, people are experimenting all avenues. This isn’t something new or strange. Wait for the changes to settle in after a few weeks. Then we’ll know what effect the changes had.

Titanimite.2534:

No offense, but I have no reason why you guys insist on going into Water and Arcana. Its just not worth it, I find a Staff build with 30/10/10/10/10 or S/D or S/F with 30/10/10/20/0 to just be much better overall.

>says it’s not worth it to put points in water or arcana
>has water and arcana in his fire nuking builds

lolokay bro, don’t hurt yourself on those contradictions.

reikken.4961:

lol at people who feel like arcana is a mandatory trait line
being addicted to evasive arcana is one thing, but that’s all it is: being addicted to it. it’s not at all mandatory, and it isn’t better than other trait lines

For survivability, it’s either dump a lot of points into water for it or dump a bunch into arcana and get some utility out of it to.

juno.1840:

The “learn to play” and “get use to it” arguments are getting very aggravating.

The buff does not outweigh the nerf when specifically examining the D/D combo chain.

If you cannot see the difficulties a D/D ele has executing a multi-stage skill combo then there’s no need to continue this discussion. There is no alternative to replace Arcane Wave in this specific use case, so in short ANet has decided that it’s not important (most likely unintentionally). The new heal is not a substitute that is worth the trade-off compared to the old Arcane Wave.

No dude, like, just l2p.
“This isn’t a nerf, just play better!”
“This doesn’t change your playstyle!……But srsly why don’t you change your playstyle then?”
“I’m a staff ele”
“Why not replace Wave with Brilliance?”

These posts are all kinds of hilarious. It’s like the ele subforum is some kind of alternate Lovecraftian dimension of mind bending.

J Night.3468:

change your playstyle a bit

Just going to point this out, but some people play ele for the playstyle or a particular one. I’d be willing to bet it’s not an insignificant minority of people either.

And now I’m on a folk rock binge…

Swagg.9236:

As a staff elementalist

Then you have no concept of how this affected arrays of existing builds.

Adastra.9821:

The explanation given behind the change to arcane wave is that the new heal would make 2 skills too similar (pb aoe blast finisher) so they decided to give arcane wave range.

Yea…ofc….because I totally want to replace an attack rotation skill with my heal…sure…that’s sustainable.
Genius.

bulent.7391:

Nova Stiker.8396:

bulent.7391:

Disagree. Please do not revert arcane wave. If you cant target a simple skill on your fields that is your problem. Only argument about arcane wave is people don’t want to target one single skill on a point every 30 seconds cus that is so hard. ‘’ oo I can’t do my combos now cus now I have this green thing pops up oooOOooo ’’. Its really easy to use it any d/d or other weapon combos. If you having hard time turn on fast targeting with range. Have you ever played engineer?

You never used it with D/D obviously, you have to aim BEHIND you to get the burst with burning speed.

if you are really dependent on blasting burning speed use arcane brilliance on it.

You’ve never actually done a might stack rotation have you?
Also
>burning your heal so you can do you formerly normal might rotation
ur so smurt, dat jus as gud. U do gud thinks

Linnael.1069:

Lostwingman.5034:

Why not just add more utility skills then?
Have a self blast finisher and a ranged one. They’re adding in new healing skills progressively so that isn’t apparently an issue…

Good point! Nobody knows if there’re going to be more skills of each type, or just more skill types or whatever, but it would make more sense to fit the ranged finisher niche into a new skill. As for another high damage, guaranteed crit, pbAoE instacast blast finisher? I don’t know if they fill that rather narrow niche with a new skill and have it feel different.

I don’t know…there’s a pretty big feel difference between a ranged blast finisher and a Pbaoe one…

Jeydra.4386:

What’s wrong with Arcane Wave being ranged?

Might stack combo rotations are gutted.

Why not just add more utility skills then?
Have a self blast finisher and a ranged one. They’re adding in new healing skills progressively so that isn’t apparently an issue…

ens.9854:

The only build that can pressure and therefore survive without some healing is fresh air because it can escape the rotation hell other ele are stuck in

This is pretty much my main reason for sticking with Fresh Air. It’s about our most dynamic build.

I still don’t know why they couldn’t just make a new skill.
Have one that is self-AoE and another that is ground target.

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

I seem to be the only one that loves Scarlet.

To bad she’s been presented poorly with such a small trickle of story that if it were water a cactus would dried up by now.

Cataclysm.7491:

I have a sneaking suspicion CHIPS is German and Lostwingman is Russian and wondered if there was any bias in the Tank discussion.

American.
And I left this conversation a long time ago because they are taxing and time consuming.
I just couldn’t leave the “Germans had the best tanks of the war!” thing alone.

Anyone else notice this still isn’t working?
Just tested it with Stone Flesh…
“Stone Flesh: Fixed an issue that caused this trait to behave incorrectly with Lingering Elements.”
Is it supposed to not work?
Can we just get this trait replaced already?

Actually guys…their graphics may be set real low in which case the res’ing animation looks like they’re getting stuff thrown at them.

draxynnic.3719:

Without knowing more information, I would definitely consider those figures highly suspect.

I would, actually, believe that the kill ratios between Shermans and Panthers are what you say there… but not because the Sherman is a better tank (it really wasn’t) but because of the overwhelming strategic advantage the Western Allies had. From before D-Day on, it was rare for Panthers to be fighting Shermans without being short on fuel and ammunition and having to constantly be on guard for attacks from the air (both of which hamper their ability to fight other tanks) and without the Shermans having an overwhelming numerical advantage (and as Stalin says, quantity has a quality all of its own. Having a numerical advantage doesn’t just mean that you can trade one for one for longer – it usually means you can find ways of reducing your overall casualties as well, such as getting around the good frontal armour on the Panther by flanking it).

No, stop.
Stop.
Before you get to it. No, CAS was ineffective against AFVs. It shone in taking out supply lines.
No, the Sherman with even the 75mm M3 could handle Tigers and once again those were rare.
http://tankarchives.blogspot.ca/2013/03/sherman-vs-tiger.html
The 76mm was even better.
http://tankarchives.blogspot.ca/2013/04/american-guns-vs-german-tanks.html
http://worldoftanks.com/en/news/21/the_chieftains-hatch-end_of_75_M4/
http://worldoftanks.com/en/news/21/chieftains-hatch-us-guns-vs-german-armour-part-1/
http://worldoftanks.com/en/news/21/us-guns-german-armor-part-2
Also yea, I know, “world of tanks” but the guy is an ex-tank commander tasked with going through the American archives.
http://worldoftanks.com/en/news/21/us-national-archives/
Additionally before anyone goes raving again, the 17lbr had serious accuracy issues. Serious ones.

draxynnic.3719:

The British study is probably more reliable,

Why? Because it’s British? This was an internal army survey to evaluate their equipment.

although it is worth noting that that study compares the inventories of each side rather than Panther versus Sherman directly (and during the Normandy campaign, the Allies largely had relatively modern models, while the Germans had a lot of very obsolete stuff mixed in).

No it doesn’t, it’s numerical comparison in an engagement. Where did you even read that?

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that “guaranteeing victory” means a guaranteed victory against a good unit which is equipped with Panthers and Tigers.

Do you not know what “guaranteed” means or do you think this report was something made to send out to the public for pr? This was the army evaluating for its own purposes.

Presumably, the Germans are attacking at times when their strategic hindrances are minimised, so what that study shows is that the Germans needed a 50% numerical advantage to ensure a victory, while the Allies needed a 120% advantage.

Yes, because the Germans were attacking medium class tanks with vehicles twice their weight. Yet, nowhere near the compensating effectiveness.

draxynnic.3719:

Now, the numbers aren’t as easy to figure out as that laughable “the Sherman is 3.6 times as effective as the Panther” figure,

I’m sorry, I’ll get the pentagon on the line. They’ll want an expert like you on the double who knows more than the Army on the ground in WW2 doing the indepth evaluation.

but it does imply that the German equipment was roughly 40% more effective than what the Western Allies had (in that 15 German tanks could do to 10 Western tanks what it would take 22 Western tanks to do to 10 German tanks).

When it existed and worked. Which was rare, because the Panther was an unreliable mess.

Which seems reasonable – the Sherman really isn’t as good as the Panther, but neither is it as bad in comparison as the legends would suggest.

The Sherman is only disadvantaged to the Panther from extreme range in open ground. Outside of that it’s a matter of tactics and crew training.

With regards to the 5v1 thing… I’d believe it with the 75mm-armed Sherman, which really did have serious trouble getting through the frontal armour of the Panther or any of the armour on a Tiger. 76mm-armed Shermans, however, are another thing altogether, let alone the Firefly.

Yea….not really…no….as already posted….
…………………
And that’s seriously all I’m posting on the matter…the rest of my sources are tied up in books anyway.

draxynnic.3719:

It’s telling, in fact, that the one major tankbuilding nation that was in a position where they had to restart from scratch used the Panther as the basis. Particularly when it’s the French, who have since shown a history of exclusively using their own equipment even when foreign equipment that better meets their requirements is available.

Are you being serious or is this a joke?
The French had NO tank building industry when liberated. If they could make anything it was vintage 1930s vehicles that were long out of date. They simply used whatever they had on hand until their own industry was able to recover. The only thing that is telling of is that a major nation with a stripped industry trying to rebuild will use whatever is on hand.

draxynnic.3719:

True enough, the AMX50 and its cousins never saw service, but the reason for that is the development of the shaped-charge warhead lead both the French and West Germans to believe that heavy armour was obsolete and that speed was the best defense, leading to both moving away from the Panther line and towards the Leopard and AMX-30 instead.

Close, but no dice. The French would have gotten their AMX 50s out roughly in time with the M103 and the Conqueror if not for the engine development issues. The constant delays with that overlapped with concern about advanced rounds and killed that. Meanwhile the M103 went on to live an uneventful service life into the 1970s.

And now I have work to do. I’m done talking about tanks for now. This is why I usually leave this to the people official documents on hand.

draxynnic.3719:

It’s also worth noting that some of the maintenance issues that the Panther had were due to compromises the Germans made due to their strategic position. The interleaved road wheels on the Panther, for instance, made maintenance a nightmare, but was done in order to address a shortage of good rubber (when the French copied it postwar without knowing that reason, much palming of faces occurred when the West German design teams were brought in for technical assistance).

Close but not quite. There were a large number of reasons. That was one but at the same time it allowed for more even ground pressure distribution and flotation while also providing protection to the side armor behind it. However, it’s complexity and propensity to get gummed up with crap made it not worth it. Additionally the Germans did end up using all steel rims on a lot of their tanks towards the end of the war, just a note.

draxynnic.3719:

The weak transmission, #1 cause of Panther breakdowns, was also something that the Germans knew how to fix – basically, install the transmission system of the Tiger instead – but they were substantially more complex to make and weren’t compatible with making Panthers in the quantity desired. If Panther production had continued in a non-wartime situation, that issue would have been promptly fixed (and probably was, in the case of the French-operated examples).

Tiger was also bigger with a bigger engine compartment. Additionally the Tiger final drive could not be adequately produced in number for the mass produced Panther because it required specialized gear cutting tools. The gears in the drive were the main culprit and they were never able to overcome that.

draxynnic.3719:

Why no postwar tanks came from the Panther development line is more of a result of national pride and manufacturing considerations than the Panther being viewed as technically inferior.

Just…no…
No country would turn away technology or design solutions “just because those guys came up with it”. Even the Germans wanted to copy the T-34, ultimately they didn’t because of concern of friendly fire and the aluminium required for the engines.
The French mimicked a lot of German designs but just couldn’t make it work.
The Panther was a dead end design. Tanks like the M26, the Centurion, and the T-44 lived on in future tank designs because they were such good platforms to build off of with each of those being the basic foundation for future design.

draxynnic.3719:

For the nations with established production lines, it was politically and technically more feasible to upgrade their existing designs – Centurions, Pershings, the T-44/54/55 – than to adopt someone else’s (although, looking at the T-54 compared to the Panther and T-34, I do have a suspicion that the Soviet designers did borrow some of the Panther’s features).

I….I don’t even know where to go with this…
The Panther was simply a dead end. There was little you could do with it. The other platforms, they exceeded it in everyway and had tons of potential. Aside from refining the parts to last longer the Panther had nothing. It was a rushed design manhandled by industry magnates and political dealings.

draxynnic.3719:

While it’s off-topic, I’d also like to see lostwingman’s sources… particularly since I’ve read that the Soviet Union issued captured Panthers as rewards to particularly distinguished crews.

No.
You’re talking about a 45t maintenance intensive vehicle that needed key parts regularly replaced. The Soviets did not produce Panther parts and would only use them if they found them and only for however long till the next break down. This was very common on the Eastern front.
.
Heard back from contact, here’s your AT Rifle source.
http://tankarchives.blogspot.ca/2013/05/infantry-vs-tanks.html
Sourced from the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.

draxynnic.3719:

Comparing unfavourably to the PzIII and PzIV (except in terms of maintenance, which the Panther admittedly did require a lot) is particularly strange there

No, it’s really not.

draxynnic.3719:

- while the Panther had relatively weak side and rear armour, it was still thicker than what it replaced, and its 75mm gun was still at least equal in firing effective HE than anything a PzIII mounted or most PzIVs mounted.

The Panther side and rear armor could be penetrated by almost all of the same weapons that the PzIII and PzIV. For a tank that weighed twice as much as the PzIII and some 20t more than the PzIV, that is awful. Just awful.
Also no, HE was worse in the L70 because of the high velocity which required thicker shell walls and thus less HE filler.

PzIII Ausf. N
7.5 cm Sprgr.34 – High Explosive
Explosive Filler: 0.69 kg

Pz IV Ausf G/H/J
7.5 cm Sprgr.Patr.34 KwK 40 (High Explosive)
Explosive Filler: 0.66 kg

Panther
7.5cm Sprenggranate 42 (Sprgr. 42)
Explosive Filler: 0.600kg

draxynnic.3719:

Not to mention most Western tanks at the time – the Russians were anomalous in going up to larger calibers at the time.

Because the Soviets smartly required that their tank guns have both good armor penetration AND a good HE shell. This is why early on the T-34 was equipped with the 76.2mm F-34 instead of the limited run 57mm ZiS-4. The British would learn this lesson the hard way with their insistence on using the 2 pdr for so long.

draxynnic.3719:

I’d believe that there were Panthers taken out by partisans with antitank rifles, but if the shoe had been on the other foot, I’d expect the same of T-34s. Every tank had weak spots that generally wouldn’t be significant in normal battlefield situations, but where, if swarmed by more infantry they can deal with or one undetected partisan in the right place, the tank could be disabled by substantially weaker firepower than would normally be necessary.

Soviets early on leaned kitten the reactivated Cossacks who escaped the purges by being disbanded and sent home early on in the Soviet Unions existence. They were great at surprising and flanking German armor units. Also yes, exactly, that’s the point. You have a vehicle nearly twice as heavy as its counterparts that can be taken out by the same weapons. The only real armor advantage the Panthers had in armor was the upper plate, which isn’t much consolation when you’re attacking or not fighting in a large open field. That’s awful.

draxynnic.3719:

Either way, pretty much all the experts on the subject list the Panther and the T-34/85 as the competitors to the title of “best tank of the war”, and which it is usually comes down to whether you mean tactically on the battlefield (the Panther wins) or strategically (the T-34 wins by relative ease of production and maintenance).

I can’t quickly locate evaluations of the 85mm against the Panther but I do have some on the 85mm vs the Tiger.
"The AP shell from the domestic gun D-5-S penetrates:

the side of the hull from 1350 meters
the over-track hull from 800 meters
turret side from 800-1000 meters"

http://tankarchives.blogspot.ca/2013/03/soviet-85-mm-guns-vs-tigers.html
Again, with internal documents and test fire results (plus images) against a captured Tiger. In terms of combat effectiveness, both the T-34 and the Sherman exceeded the Panther. The US Army’s internal evaluation placed the Sherman at 3.6x as effective.