Guild Wars 2

Not for me.

/pad

Celestial gives you tons of other stats in addition to the superhighway crit damage. The lower power is far outshines by the better health, toughness and healing you get — since you were going for a generalist, your damage should also be generalist.

Zerker should have appreciably more damage than any other set other than Assassin, it’s the trade off it makes for being squishy as hell.

That said, Zerker ALSO gets hit by this incoming nerf.

Well yeah, all good then. I’m specifically talking about bosses that you can break stack for. Nobody gets upset if you break stack on Verona Spider or whatever her name was in TA Up, or against Slave a master in COF, but people will curse you for breaking stack with AC Spider Queen or Subject Alpha or Lupi (in melee run parties).

I just wish Brilliance had shorter cooldown. But I guess that would make it OP.

Vayne.8563:

Azala Yar.7693:

Jski.6180:

@ A R W E N.6895

Well its not just GW2 its all games online and or mmorpg its just how they are going to be for a time. GW2 realty is not that bad compared to what came before it its far better then WoW its more flexible then ff11 other mmorpg that have come out after GW2 have all failed to live up to any stander and i do not see ESO going that far and or wildstar.

As for the new content i am loving it they are very hard fights and the story has gotten much deeper but you got to work for it. This is what the old mmorpg had to work for story and read and look to see what is going on. I think GW2 is what you make of it if you can only push though new content it will feel just as because your playing as a means to an end not playing for the fact of playing.

Actually it’s not better than WoW, if it was I’d be playing it atm, instead of WoW.

GW2 is a good game when levelling a character for the first couple of times (starts to get boring after that as it’s just the same missions).

What WoW has going for it is the amount of different content and more people playing but then it’s been out since 2004 USA, 2005 EU.

Living story ruined GW2 for me that coupled with changes to the game so as to make the shop more appealing.

I would like GW2 to be better of course, but so far it’s not happened.

It is better than WoW, or I’d be playing WoW at the moment. It’s not only a little better than WoW, it’s a whole lot better than WoW, which I consider to be probably the worst thing that ever happened to the RPG community.

In fact, half the problems with Guild Wars 2 can trace their roots back to WoW and games like WoW that trained players to play a certain way and forced design decisions to help those players adapt to this game.

If WoW didn’t exist, I believe more people would be playing MMOs.

I agree with much of what you said. WoW made some BAD design choices that became the de facto standard for MMOs, but which bug me to no end. Things like time gating, cooldowns, farming, grinding, etc these are the legacy of WoW and they suck. I am annoyed that Gw2 is still implementing a lot of these things whether unwittingly or not.

An MMORPG doesn’t have to be his way. GW2 was designed with this kind of rallying cry in mind, but still ended up resembling the beast far too much, and that is disappointing.

That said, I disagree with the final statement. I feel wow did so much for the mmo genre, got tons more people into the genre than earlier MMOs like Everquest ever did. The only other game which I feel comes close to WoW’s influence is Ragnarok. I believe many people today started with WOW and ended up staying in the genre thanks to WoW.

Yes, it’s you. It’s only you. You are unique, a special existence in this world.

Seriously, though, Diablo 3 had content, what was disappointing was its so so simple skill system that had absolutely nothing on Diablo 2’s masterpiece of a skill and combat system. What was disappointing was the emphasis on primary stats and gear that boosted those primary stats. What was disappointing was how the entire game was built from ground up to glorify the real money auction house.

GW2 is on much better footing. It has far, far more content, and Diablo 3 already lots of content in my book. Only morons looking for “end game content” were whining. You don’t need end game content, but I guess that’s what the mmo crowd has devolved into — and Diablo 3 isn’t even an MMO. GW2 though also has some disappointing design choices, in many ways its simplistic and rigid skill system is as big a disappointment compared to GW1 the way D3’s system was a huge disappointment compared to D2. Fortunately, GW2 isn’t built ground up to glorify the gem store, and I’ll give Anet kudos for that.

Anyway, enough of that. Back on topic, GW2 is fine. I don’t like the direction LW is taking right now and Scarlet can’t die and be shoved under the rug fast enough, but I’ll live.

Don’t censor us, we can profess our Scarlet hatred all we want. this is important feedback to Anet to let them know never to pull anything like this ever again.

Gwarrior.4952:

ColinJohanson.2394:

You will absolutely see a way to create a precursor available in the future. As detailed in our plans for the second half of the year here:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/looking-ahead-guild-wars-2-in-2013/

As mentioned at the end of the blog, as always things are subject to change as test and prepare various systems. Most of the stuff covered in the blog you’ve already seen implemented, or steps towards being implemented, however the precursor building (and corresponding additional legendary items) is the one highest at risk to not make it this year.

It is still something we absolutely plan to do!

I know you must be a busy guy, but more than one year ago, Lindsey Murdock meantioned the system called “the Precursor Scavanger Hunt”, so you gave us hope and we want some answers about the schedule or even if we might not get it cause it’s canceled(we seriously doubt that). Plz plz answer us in this topic: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/So-I-brought-this-again-The-Scavanger-Hunt/first#post3525302

Lindsey Murdock said many things. None of which Arena Net did. She said they would monitor precursor prices because they were concerning, and implement fixes if they got out of hand. That was when GS and Staff precursors were going for 200gp. They now go for 800gp and nothing has been done about the problem.

styx.7294:

King Amadaeus.8619:

Not just this thread, but every thread of this type always gets two responses:

1. Transfer (obvious)
2. “Stick it out”

With all due respect, the people that stick it out are pretty awesome, and I would never try to take anything away from them.

But if you are looking for real advice: there are just as many “sad endings” for people that rode out a server only to see it fall and burn out as there are storys like “FC” where they climbed out of the bottom of the rankings.

The real question you have to ask yourself, is that is it worth you being bored/miserable (assuming it has gotten to that point) for the possibility that a server (huge group of random individuals) will somehow “figure it all out” and make a change?

Like I said the “rags to riches” stories are great, good on those folks….But the reality is that more servers “stay the same” or actually experience a fall rather than have these big rebirths and make climbs.

TL/DR: There is nothing wrong with having server loyalty, but you should not let something like that get in the way of you enjoying the mode of gameplay you like, which coincidentally is the only mode of play (out of 3 total) that relies on server-specific play.

Yeah, a lot of transfers are due to being unhappy but transferrin isn’t gonna fix many things. A lot of guilds transfer and then fall apart, a lot of people transfer and then quit playing. WvW is about buildin somethin, fightin for somethin and when you give up on that it loses some of its magic, I think.

There’s a lot to love bein in the lower tiers. It’s a sort of wilderness, without much order, or big oversight. Everythin is scaled down, individuals matter more. Night capping and outmanned happen just as much, if not more in tier 1 and the impression I get is the map is just as empty outside the single zergs each server has put out.

This man speaks much truth! Let me tell you: transferring is not the smart Answer! Stick it out, build something, fight for it with your friends.

I know all the regulars fighting on Eredon Terrace. We’re all friends and comrades in arms. People say guild loyalty is greater than server loyalty, but on Eredon that just might not be true. We have a really tight group in WvW and I’ve resisted offers from guilds on other servers to transfer because I just love my server. And we’re like the bottom last among the low tiers. Sometimes it’s not about winning, though I admit our win over Kaineng And DR last week was really sweet.
Don’t give up on kain you’re one of our eternal rivals along with Fergs.

How are you outnumbered? Many times you guys were raining down on us last week from the green keep. Your zergs utterly obliterated us many times from Stonemist.

It’s cyclical. Sometimes your coverage is on and we are badly outnumbered. Sometimes ours is on and we squash you. But I’m pretty sure I saw sixty man zergs from you guys at times and on two maps! Your server is fine. Though maybe losing to us last week May have stamped morale a bit. Come back at us this week!

Expansion packs are mods too.

Who the hell cares. It’s fine. I rather have other content and fixes done but I don’t see these “mods” as broken in any way.

You came back at the wrong time.

The living world content gives you like more than a month to complete. You just happened to come back on three last few hours it was open.

Fix black citadel too, please!

ThanatosAngel.8024:

A trinity could work if every class could fill any role they wanted at any time. But oh wait…isn’t that basically what we were supposed to get with GW2?

That’s not what we got though. Trinity gets hated on for pigeon holing, but the game that is really guilty of pigeonholing is GW2.

The extremely rigid weapon skill system pigeon holes everyone with the default loadout of skills. They try to offset this with traits, but traits are a mess with either very small effects (extra second of something here and there) and there just aren’t enough of them. Most of the traits are junk and tons of players complain about them.

Even the devs complain about it because “there isn’t enough build diversity.” Again, that fault less with the very limited pigeon hole weapon trait system you gave us.

Want more build diversity? Give us more skills, more traits, and the ability to slot in the skills we choose. Watch build diversity sky rocket.

tigirius.9014:

It’s honestly one of their biggest mistakes. All one has to do is look at the history of mmo development to see that. For example, look at how the population of Aion dropped off when they discovered that not only did you have to go into a PVP area at level 30 but you had to in order to build up any points you needed for end game gear. To further the problem, they made it so that high level geared players could come along and squish the low level players. Putting PVE progress in a PVP area is always a bad idea, there’s a reason why those two don’t mix well and it’s simply due to the types of people playing and what they prefer to do with their time while playing.

It doesn’t seem to be that big a mistake because apparently tons of people are still playing both pve and wvw.

Your also misrepresenting the analogy: wvw isn’t the way of pve progression at all. You can level up to 80 without ever touching wvw, and you can get any gear you want without ever touching wvw except for legendaries and wvw gear (which is just a reskin of pve gear)

ArchonWing.9480:

Measuring a feat is pointless if the circumstances are not balanced. Fact is that the effort required to achieve this is very different depending on circumstances. All the open world exploration is balanced because everyone faces the same content. There won’t be 2 veterans guarding a skill point one day, and 10 champions guarding the same skill point the next. The difficulty of visiting various locations does vary heavily in wvw. Plus guesting makes it so that no excuses whatsoever

But your own measure, map completion in pve is pointless.

The effort to complete Orr maps varies greatly depending on circumstances. Some points are more heavily guarded at certain times than others.

You just handily defeated yourself.

As for that silliness about wvw exploration being out of a players’ control, that’d utter silliness. You have the exact same ability to influence wvw exploration as you do pve exploration. You can really players to help you both, you can karma train both, you beat down enemy obstacles in both. WVW is far easier actually because there are less maps and easier things do : just POIs and vistas mostly, no renown hearts, no hidden places, no jumping puzzles (save green keep vista which is relatively easy) and it’s all straight forward.

I completed wvw map on eredon terrace during the season, where we were almost always losing team. We were continuously outnumbered, sometimes ten times the number players. Yet It was easy to do. You just have to stop thinking negatively about and just do it.

Pandemoniac.4739:

Personally, I think having WvWvW maps as part of map completion is a good idea. The problem is that your server has to be winning or have drawn a particular color for folks to get the map completion, and that’s a bad idea. Would it be so terrible if the the POIs were accessible regardless of who owns the keeps in a particular area? It would still be dangerous to get close to an owned keep.

I think using an individual achievement like map completion to try to incentivize a server wide goal like WvW dominance isn’t a great mechanic. I think encouraging typically PvE folks to come in and look around and see the entire game is a good thing, but requiring them to participate in conquering the maps or to wait for months depending on the server they’re on is setting the bar a little too high.

Personally, I he doing Reknown Hearts. They are slow to do, boring, take so long, grindy, and by far the most time consuming portion of map completion. They’re not even about exploitation! They’re about stupid fetch quests or stupid kill this quests. What’s the Exploration value of doing that?

And yet we are forced do these menial plebian labours to complete our Map completion. Yet I don’t see any of you complaining about that.

Frankly, that’s setting the bar too high. I just want to explore new places and seed new sights, not be some stupid NPC’s gopher.

It took me weeks to finish all the renown hearts. It took me three days to conquer all the points and Vistas of wvw. Food for thought.

If you’re looking dirt period to adventure with in open world, one way I’d to just announce yourself in map chat. Type /m and whatever your message is.

You can also use LFG, but seriously who looks in LFG for open world?

I rather get a high precursor drop rate from wurm.

MotherKitten.6795:

I’m not going to gear or trait for healing but I want to be good at pushing the buttons for the times when I choose to play healer.

One thing that is giving me trouble is trying to use a finisher on the water field created by Healing Rain. I’ve tried hitting Eruption first and then switching to water and hitting Healing Rain and I don’t notice any effect. When I try it with the fire fields or with the lighting fields it works but I try it with the water field from Healing Rain nothing seems to happen. I count off the duration of the healing regeneration buff and its not any longer so I’m not getting the duration stacking I was hoping for. The icon also never gets any little numbers on it showing stacking, though I’m not sure if Regen icons ever get those.

I’ve also tried using the blast finisher from Arcane Wave and that also produces no observable effect on water fields but works on fire and lightning fields.

My second question is about the utility of the healing from Water Blast. I’ve seen several things on the internet claiming the healing from it is useless. The numbers do seem okay to me I’m wondering why this skill is so lowly regarded.

You might have the timing wrong. I’ve been using Arcane wave on Healing Rain AND Geyser for a long time and always Area Heal.

You may want to hold off in case the zerk nerf makes zerk utterly horrible.

zilcho.7624:

Mochann.5298:

If you move away from the stack as zilcho suggests, you face the ire of the group if anything goes wrong. If you do not beat the boss and the group wipes, you will be blamed for breaking the stack. At best, a kind group will just smile and say, “Let’s try that again.” In many PUG groups, you’ll find some that go, “Kitten this I don’t have all night.” and they rage quit. Worst case scenario, someone will kick you for being “incompetent.”

So break away from the stack at your own risk.

I was only talking in general. It is true that, most of the time, the corner stacking is only meant to position the boss. As long as you don’t pull aggro, you are not changing a thing by breaking out of the stack. Obviously, if the fight has a special mechanic forcing you to stack, you need to stack.

As for the ire of the group, it cuts both ways. If you can’t stay alive in the stack, don’t break out, and die then you face their wrath when the group wipes at 5%. When you die, you’re (in theory) cutting out 20% of your group’s damage.

This isn’t true in my experience. I’ve run hundreds of pug runs and I have never been criticised for staying in the stack because that’s what everyone wanted.

On the other hand, I’ve gotten tons of flak for getting off the stack.

LightningBlaze.4913:

Mochann.5298:

BlackBeard.2873:

You need more burst yourself, and then you will learn to love these thieves: they are usually very bad. They build very glassy, but one burning speed + LF or burning speed + arcane wave downs them. You don’t even need to land Firegrab to destroy them.

The harder thieves are the ones that are start enough to not go full-glass. In fact, if they take 30 in trickery, they can interrupt your ether renewal regardless of whether you have stab or not (their steal will steal 1 boon and daze, and prioritizes stab first). If you are pure bunker, this fight is miserable. If you have some good offense yourself, know when to pop your utilities/auras, and know when to dodge, you will love the fools who build super-squishy.

More burst on yourself won’t help when you’re dead from the first shot.

In burst vs. burst, he who strikes first, wins. The thief, with stealth, will always strike first.

I’ve said this many times before: Backstabbing Stealth thieves are a hard counter to glass zerk eles.

The difference is you don’t have to be glass as ele to burst a glass thief down in one sec. The thief will always strike first if you fail to notice him coming or fail to dodge. Even if the thief is on stealth we have invulnerability and block skills that allows us to strike first as soon as they come out of stealth. Even if the thief strikes first, it will require at least 2 hits to get you down. If you have good reflexes and your utilities are not on cd, you can avoid the second hit and down him first. Full glass thieves are that easy to defeat.

You don;t have to glass, but I choose to glass. I’m just saying that glass thief stealth backstabber is a hard counter to glass ele. Of course a non-glass Ele stands a far better chance against them.

Eh, I find it easier to run after someone, usually if someone goes first they draw the aggro and you just wade in after without having to worry a thing. That’s my experience though, both in Twilight Arbor and Arah, which IMO have the hardest trash runs among the dungeons. But I am sure there are ways to do both. I certainly don’t have a problem soloing the runs, just that I find it easier letting someone take the aggro first — I usually don’t even have to pop any utilities when I follow.

I should try shifting to LH during stacks. That I have not yet tried, but now that I think about it it makes perfect sense. My other trick was to go Tornado and use that to blind — now that you mention it using LH makes FAR more sense. Silly me for not thinking of that! Thanks for the tip.

DeWolfe.2174:

Can I just just say to the OP, YOUR mistake was assuming everyone is of the same opinion. If a villain is good, there shouldn’t have been any breadcrumbs left behind. I’d much rather be surprised then looking back to how it all played out.

Scarlet left tons of breadcrumbs in her other appearances. She is totally random and her actions make no sense. That’s why she’s a bad villain and not a good one.

LittleLepton.8915:

Just curious, why is Faren not on this list?
.

Because nobody buys his mini.

aspirine.6852:

Start working on it? There are more than 300 people at anet, you dont think they all work on the living story do you?

Oh yeah, 10 of them are working on balance, and that’s why we are getting perfectly balanced classes and zerker nerfs and perma stealth still all over WvW. The other 289 are working on Living Story. And the last one is cleaning the toilets.

Seriously people, Living World is just a diversion to tide me over until a real expansion hits. By “expansion” I will define it as such, because I don’t want to get caught up in a stupid semantics debate:

• At least 1 new playable race
• At least two new classes
• A continuation to personal story after Zhaitan has been killed about 50% as long as the original personal story for all races and paths
• At least 10 new zones, some of which are the standard levelling zones for the new playable race
• A kittenload of new skills and trait lines
• Raising the level cap to 100, allowing for more points too be bought for traits

And if I’m lucky, a revamp of the skill system to allow skills to be slotted per your whim into weapons (limited to skills for that weapon, of course, but dear God give us the option to customize our skill bars further)

Oh and a part in the personal story where I can watch Trehearne and Scarlet getting roasted over a spit in Southsun Cove while I drink an Apple Karka Martini.

Sylv.5324:

Folks who claim that zerker is high risk = high reward are kidding just about everyone: they only run in groups that minimise the risk, because that is a low-risk, high-reward strategy. Playing in a mixed-stat group is much more high-risk, which is why they hate it.

Change the AIs and other things to make it high-risk and make glass cannons actually play like glass, and the complaints will flood in, but at least you can quote right back at them: high risk = high reward, right?

You’re not playing. zerker Ele, so you have absolutely no right to talk about this, you hard to kill mesmer.

Treborlavok.3504:

Einlanzer.1627:

Frankly, I don’t think this is a bad change. It’s rather obvious that the synergy between those three stats is too strong (the growth curve is more hyperbolic with less diminishing returns), which made Zerker objectively superior with regard to ‘bang for buck’. Plus, ‘Ferocity’ just sounds better than ‘Crit Damage’. I wish they’d do that with all the secondary stats.

Encounter design definitely shares part of the blame, but Zerker still needed to be toned down. I hope they continue working on polishing encounters and improving the ‘soft’ role system.

Zerker gear isn’t the problem. The problem is the game and it’s mechanics. Aswell as their flawed attempts at “fixing” encounters thus far… Defiant/10x the HP with extremely drawn out stand in place combat(wurm,golem,maw,etc)/condition caps not player based but encounter based and even if they were player based still make conditions in pve worthless… To name a few…

Also along those lines the way every dungeon is set up there’s no reason to run anything aside from DD(direct dmg) DPS builds.

-> We have no need for support outside of our own utilities.
-> We have no group synergy outside of measely combo fields.
-> We have no need for defensive gear for any encounter since we have built in defenses with our heals/utilities/dodges.
-> We have no encounters that require actual tactics outside of just dodging “X” attack. Stand in place AI falls into this too.

We could go on and on about this. But the problem will always exist in gw2. Remove zerker gear… Knights or pvt becomes the next hot topic, then that gets nerfed because constant qq because they’ve yet to address the actual problem, their game/core mechanics. It’s an on going cycle that will not be fixed. Especially if they keep going about using “duct tape” to fix a broken weld.

Plus everyone who doesn’t understand what every zerker/celestial user is so upset about… It’s wvw. Pve and wvw are 2 completely different beasts yet they feel the need to keep them on the same “balance” updates. The loss of dmg for burst/DD power builds vs other players is huge and makes everyone who spent all their time and gold crafting their gear now worthless.

This is almost exactly what I think, spot on. Zerker isn’t the problem. It’s the basic game design philosophy Gw2 follows. Until that changes — and it probably never will — these problems aren’t going to go away no matter how many duct tape/bandaid patches Anet applies.

As mentioned, we don’t need to do anything but DPS because everyone has their own heals, their own support, and limited group synergy (though their is more than combo fields, like group buffs, but that’s really more like group support, whatever). And the reason that is the case, is because Anet adamantly thinks a game Without The Trinity is the way to go. Because Anet didn’t want healers or tanks or DPS, and wanted e done to be able to do everything, they designed classes to be ale to do everything with the rigid skill setups we currently have.

Too bad, though, that that naturally means players will eventually gravitate to DPS against a stupid AI. This is inevitable. The more a player plays and learns the ins and outs of enemy AI behavior, the less the need for other stats other than DPS. This is only the natural, inevitable course for this choice Anet made in the game design.

Oh how sort sighted! And now they try to fix it with a stupid nerf like this, when the real problem is the core design that made everyone into an uberman capable of doing everything on their own! You want diversity ? Break out of this ridiculousness about No Trinity and design a game where players need to specialize to help each other out, where players help compensate for each other’s weaknesses. Then people will have incentive not to run just min-maxed DPS builds.

You brought this DPS plague on yourself with your game design choice.

Sirendor.1394:

Ozoug.4158:

Fix the content not the gear.

This nerf changes nothing

+1 indeed

No, fix the grind, not the gear.

Why do people wear zerker anyway? To clear dungeons fast. Why do we clear dungeons fast? To make money as quick as possible. Why do we so that? Because we need to grind for absurd material requirements to craft Ascended and Legendary gear.

Stop making us grind, and the speed run culture will probably stop.

Might be too late now, though.

Kim.4152:

We’ve noticed a real change in player’s behaviour over the past little while. Profanity doesn’t bother us much but there has been a noticeable increase in disgustingly racist, homophobic and sexist comments, as well as generally abusive behaviour.

I’ve quit playing a few times because of comments in chat promoting violence against women, kitten , etc. My husband once asked them politely to cool it and in return was called an f***ing c*** (misogynistic slur referencing a female body part). Seriously, I wonder what kind of morons there are out there that think joking about kitten women and smacking women around is appropriate. It is highly offensive and absolutely disgusting.

I’m not going to turn off map chat because I have the right to know if certain events are happening, etc. I should not lose that because some people are jerks. I keep adding to my block list but that does nothing about the problem when more and more idiots join in.

I really think there needs to be a formal stern warning here, the log in screen, wherever making it clear that this behaviour as well as the abusive behaviour the OP described is completely unacceptable and will result in a perma-ban if repeated.

I’ve run into some people with this problem playing PUG groups in LFG. I’ve fortunately never had this problem on my home server. The solution is to report these abrasive chat people for verbal abuse — there’s an in game tool for it. Block list isn’t necessarily the tool to use.

So far, I have not run into these people,again. Maybe they have been suspended or banned and have learnt their lesson. Just keep reporting and hope that Anet knows how to enforce Public Decency so that their game is not ruined.

Grinding is the culprit here. People are being “serious business” in LFGs because they need to grind for those ascendeds and legendaries. If we didn’t need to grind, we could just slack off and have fun.

Unfortunately, the long time players who have done everything have nothing better to do than grind for legendary and ascended gear, and the best way to do so is in dungeons and fractals, and those require LFG unless you have a good guild or friend list that’s always on to help you.

Einlanzer.1627:

Togashi Jack.9531:

more than likely what ended up happening with the Ferocity patch is that they saw a problem that needed to be addressed and this was a stopgap meassure that could be implemented immediately while they work on a more permanent solution to the problem – which yes should involve a reworking on enemy ai, attack speed, and a rebalancing of other stats, like vitality, toughness, healing power, and condi damage.

This is pretty much how I see it, and why I don’t have that huge a problem with it. Something needed to be done, at least in PvE.

I disagree with this. Nothing needs to be done to PVE. Why does PVE need to be fixed, just because the best set to wear for it is Zerker?

I see people with all sorts of builds and sets in PvE. Not everyone is using zerker. The ones in zerker gear are just people like me who like to speed run dungeons. And I do that only because I need gold — because I am grinding for a precursor that costs 800 gold to buy, and is NIH impossible to acquire by other means.

Stop making me grind, and I will stop wearing zerker gear to grind with, and play wih dumb stupid armors to have “fun” experimenting and just being plain whacky.

That’s not a joke… I like just relaxing and playing leisurely, and not being in “speed run mode” all the time. I am just stuck in speed run mode because the game forces me to grind.

This is the smart solution, but Anet will never do it because:

A. They think GW2 should have no Trinity, and buffing heal or toughness and vit would invite The Trinity into the game.
B. Anet is Bipolar. Offense is king and that’s why we have gear that have all three offensive traits but no gear that has three defensive traits. But wait lets nerf critical damage, an offensive trait!
C. They aren’t smart.
D. All of the above.

Seriously though, what Bri said is true, a lot of the problems aren’t with the stats themselves, it with other aspects of the game. Healing is generally a lousy stat be ause their aren’t enough healing skills in the game: a problem that stems from two bad design choices — no trinity ( no one should be a healer in this game!) and the casual-friendly weapon skill system which does not allow you to properly select which skills you want to use and specialize in.

Fixing these two problems is probably impossible at this point because Anet will not back down on these two absurdly bad design choices.

The other problems that need to be fixed, I agree, include enemy AI and capabilities. Good luck reworking that, that’s ugh impossible now as well, fixing that would be making an entirely new game (same as having to fix the trinity/skill problem).

In short, we are not likely to see these problems fixed until GW3. Maybe, just maybe, they might be fixed in an expansion, but that’s not likely since the game needs to work both for people who buy the expansion and those who don’t. There can be no fragmentation. And besides, Anet is not interested in making an expansion, they only want to do Living World updates if they can help it.

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

Hopefully they are looking at this fairly seriously today. A lot of the stuff on that livestream was obviously not thought through very well and they’ve already backed down on the nerf to the mesmer Deceptive Evasion trait.

It still makes me sick that I’ve been using a Celestial Ascended armor set for about a week and they come out with this… ><

They better back down on the crit damage nerf too, because its plain stupid.

About time celestial gear got a nerf, it was too powerful doing almost as much Dmg as zerk gear with far better stats all around.

Well, you will not have great damage with a bunker build. I am a fan of specialization — if I am gonna do a bunker trait build with 30/30 water arcane, I am also gonna stack Toughness and Vitality or Healing to play to my strengths.

Yeah, there’s no substitute for practice. With Ele, this is extremely true. I used to be down all the time in dungeons before things “clicked.” I am still down a lot in Fractals as I have only started running fractals recently — but I get better at it.

And yeah if you are having trouble doign trash runs, take FGS. It’s amazing for trash runs. I don’t since I can manage without it, but if you are needing that extra dose of mobility use FGS and dash through the mobs with FGS3 and FGS4. They have extremely short cooldown as well so you can really just zip through everything.

Wow! Sigil of Hydromancy just noticed it became super expensive thanks to reading this thread!

Lucky I bought two — and slotted them into my warrior’s gear. I wish I had bought more now.

Yeah, FGS doens’t break stun — that’s what Vapor Form is for. When you want to disengage, when you are stunned or in a losing situation, go mist, get some distance away. Once out, use your mobility skill (like Burning Retreat or RTL or whatever) then pop FGS, and use it to outrun whoever is chasing you. Against most classes and builds you won’t need FGS to disengage, but against Thief and Warr this usually isn’t enough, so you need FGS for that extra boost of mobility.

It’s up to you if you want to use FGS or Elemental or Tornado, just realize that Elemental and Tornado don’t give you extra options to disengage if that is your desire.

But if you want an escape route as a Glass Staff Ele in WvW FGS is the only reliable way I’ve found to disengage. I can’t disengage from anyone reliably (or rather, from thieves or warrs) without FGS.

I personally don’t run FGS, I run Tornado because I go for broke doing damage. If I die, then I die. But on the days I want to run, I slot in FGS.

Just saying, not saying this is an optimal build or anything, but I am saying that Eles technically have better mobility than any other class out there if they spec for it. And yes, in my post above I did mean a flat out race — funny thing that happened, one of our Warrs in WvW challenged one of our Eles to a race, saying Warrs are the fastest class and can outrun anyone. We Eles said, BS, haha. And we actually did the race and beat him handily with FGS. Without FGS, Ele would lose to Warr’s GS5, GS3 and Bullrush.

In a good group with a warrior and/or guardian (preferably several of them) it’s possible to survive stacking by virtue of the protection and healing you get from Guardians and the buffs from Warrior banners.

But generally speaking, prepare to get downed by bosses while stacking in corners. My solution is to not stack wtih certain bosses — you can get away with not stacking with group in certain bosses like Melraune spider boss in TA Up path.

In some dungeons and bosses this is an issue — some groups will hate you for not stacking with them, as you will cause the boss to use range attacks if you don’t stack, and the group wants to only have to deal with the boss’s melee attacks. For example, in COE not stacking against Subject Alpha will earn you some insults from the stacking group. Not stacking against AC Spider Queen will net the same (“stack you ****** or she’ll use her Poison AOE!”)

In AC, I still get downed by Spider Queen as a glass staff ele while corner stacking, so I have to resort to my “water tactic” as described above, that generally gets me through. In a good group with warriors and guards giving the right buffs, though, I can survive in full DPS mode and just burn the poor queen to bits.

If you move away from the stack as zilcho suggests, you face the ire of the group if anything goes wrong. If you do not beat the boss and the group wipes, you will be blamed for breaking the stack. At best, a kind group will just smile and say, “Let’s try that again.” In many PUG groups, you’ll find some that go, “Kitten this I don’t have all night.” and they rage quit. Worst case scenario, someone will kick you for being “incompetent.”

So break away from the stack at your own risk.

I do pug runs with Staff 30/10/10/10/10. It’s not a problem once you get used to the play style.

piffdaddy.8014:

I do think ride the lightning is the reason eles aren’t completely viable in spvp. Other roamers such as a thief, Mesmer, or even a warrior all have ways to disengage if the fight is not in their favor (for instance 1v1 on far point and 2 others come to assist enemy team). Eles have NO way to get away; ride the lightning is almost always on cooldown when you need it.

Dagger mainhand may be able to be a mediocre side point bunker after next patch, nothing more. Spirit ranger or engi will still be much better side point holders. Burst roamer ele will still be a liability to the team(for reasons I mentioned, no reliable way to disengage like other roamers have). WvW roaming is again lackluster because no reliable way to get away (other than maybe firey greatsword which is a freaking elite skill)

Yes you can wvw roam with a group of friends who are ready to rez you when needed (roll with a thief who has shadow refuge). Solo, you really have no way to get away while a warrior can troll around all day with his greatsword, outrunning zergs. Thieves will chase you down and basilisk venom you from range.

I tried to post a thread about ride the lightning in the balance forum but for some reason I can’t :/

Ele has far mobility than warr. It’s called Fiery Great Sword. No class can beat an Ele in a race because of FGS. You can disengage with this very easily.

Kinda happy for all you D/d eles, this looks like a big buff patch for you guys. I’m a bit miffed at the crit damage thigh, as I am strictly a damage zerker in staff. This might screw me. The two sigil slots though might just make up for it.

Overall, interesting and it gives me incentive to practice d/d more. Good to see anet is finally fixing ele and doing something about Necros

But where is the fix to thief perma stealth? !

Glad I must have dodged a bullet on him! I must have chosen a different path.

30 in fire is not a must — though I do run 30 in fire for my own reasons.

Cantrip build is a very defensive build focused on evades and healing yourself up. It’s good if you want to survive, but does crap for damage.

As for staff being a support weapon, I can’t agree. Yeah, it’s good for support, but it’s also very good for dealing tons of damage.

But I do agree you can’t really play staff solo — you need a partner or a group so in that sense it’s a weapon that always goes in a team — either you support or need support. It’s very difficult to go solo with staff in any player vs player situation. PVE though it’s fine.

And you do have to give up everything like HP and defense.

Who’s Doc Howler again?

I have something like 1,000 toughness and 11k hitpoints. A lot of things in this game can one shot or two shot me.

Eles are pretty good at trash running. The only important thing you need to do is to have these three in your utility slots: Armor of Earth, Vapor Form, and Signet of Air. And have Ether Renewal as heal.

Any Ele can run any trash run in any dungeon with those three utilities, on any build. I have full zerk (All Exotic Zerker Armor, All Zerk Ascended Trinkets, Zerk weapon) with 30/10/10/10/10 and I can trash run Arah P1’s last run without any problems whatsoever.

If you are hit with Immobil/Cripple/Chill just use Ether Renewal. When you get knocked down by a Graveling or some other monster, use Armor of Earth. Last resort, use Vapor Form then switch to water immediately (to regen).

If you have additional stability traits like Rock Solid it gets even easier, or if you are using D/D or D/F or what not (I use staff exclusively) as these weapons have more mobility to let you run even faster or defenses to keep you from going down. For staff I just use Air 4 for swiftness, then swap to water. Swap to earth and use Earth 4 sometimes. If I am already in combat and slowed I can use Water 4 to chill or Air 5 to stun, but usually just stay Water and use water 3 and 5 to heal and remove conditions.

The bigger issue is stacking. I have trouble staying alive in stacks with my build. I can still do all the important speed runs without any problem like AC1, Ac3, COF1, COF2, HOTW1. But I usually die during corner stacking.

As a Staff Ele, one way to offset this is to slot Armor of Earth and Arcane Armor as your util, use it, then switch to Water attunement and your 3, 5 and auto attack skills should keep you afloat.

As for fighting within 600 range, yes it’s very doable. It’s not easy, but once you learn to do it it becomes natural. I can clear any dungeon easily with dodging and all that even on my fully glass build. I am still learning to do the same with Fractals, but it can be done.

And yes, it’s harder than when you’d play as a Warrior or Guardian (heck, I can clear AC with a naked warrior no problem) but that’s the nature of the Ele class. You can’t face tank the way a Guardian or Warrior would, accept this and move on.

BlackBeard.2873:

You need more burst yourself, and then you will learn to love these thieves: they are usually very bad. They build very glassy, but one burning speed + LF or burning speed + arcane wave downs them. You don’t even need to land Firegrab to destroy them.

The harder thieves are the ones that are start enough to not go full-glass. In fact, if they take 30 in trickery, they can interrupt your ether renewal regardless of whether you have stab or not (their steal will steal 1 boon and daze, and prioritizes stab first). If you are pure bunker, this fight is miserable. If you have some good offense yourself, know when to pop your utilities/auras, and know when to dodge, you will love the fools who build super-squishy.

More burst on yourself won’t help when you’re dead from the first shot.

In burst vs. burst, he who strikes first, wins. The thief, with stealth, will always strike first.

I’ve said this many times before: Backstabbing Stealth thieves are a hard counter to glass zerk eles.