Guild Wars 2

Duplicated.4715:

Navzar.2938:

The precursors are one of the materials. So imo, they should be about as difficult to acquire as the gifts, which also require a lot of input. I don’t think is should be a ridiculous amount like 300g of course, but they shouldn’t be worthless either. Something like 50g worth, or a different method to acquire them that takes a good amount of time and/or effort just like the other components.

I wouldn’t mind even if it costs like 100g to get a legendary, but 300-400g? That’s way out of reach of probably 99% of playerbase.

Well, this doesn’t hold true anymore after yesterday’s event lol.

Even if precursors were free, you’d still be paying that much for the rest of the gifts. I’m just saying that precursors should be equally as hard to get as the other 3 components, not less, not more. And very long, fairly challenging quest would be an okay way to do that. Effortless legendary component is not so legendary.

Sorry, but what gear did you have? Full masterwork level equipment is very easy to get, you probably wouldn’t spend more than 30silver for a full set, even if you were level 80.

Edit: That being said, if you’re talking about Ascalon Catacombs storymode, that’s rather pathetic of them seeing as story dungeons are deliberately toned down for dungeon newcomers.

Death Reincarnated.3570:

Ok here is a POV.

Why are people so overly concerned with the introduction of this new gear tier?

If you dont wan’t to do it (obtain, gather etc.) then don’t, simple. Or is it because you know you will do it but could not be bothered with another task?

If the latter is the case then why bother with it?

See, its a loop.

There are lots of tasks/goals/achievements to do in this game. All of which require “grinding” to complete. This new ‘Ascended’ gear tier is no different.

The point is, people are drawn towards completing stuff but hate to put in the effort – well tough luck my friend(s). The higher the reward the more effort needs to be put in.

I don’t see anything wrong with the introduction of the Ascended gear. Its not demoralising, however, what it does is add more content and cater for those who want to use it.

:)

Because it will lead to exclusion based on not having the top gear. When good gear is easy to get, that’s ok. When it’s a grind to get, that’s not so ok. Also, anet stated that ascended gear would be necessary to delve into higher level fractals.

It also means that people will be beating you not because they’re more skilled/better, but simply because they had more money to pour into their gear, because they either grind for gold or got lucky with the RNG.

I definitely wouldn’t count grinding for gear as progression, but I do really like the new fractal dungeons They’re actually somewhat challenging and there’s more to them than killing everything by just whacking away at it. Even if it isn’t complex, the little puzzles that make you use a strategy and environment really add a lot to the experimence.
So fractal: very good. New gear grind: very bad.

I actually wouldn’t mind ascended equipment if they didn’t cost so much. For example, you can get very nice stats combo on an exotic trinket for 3g. An ascended item costs 24 skill points, a vial of condensed essence, 50 ectos and 250 of a t6 mat. This mins 12g for the ectos, and then 39 to 62 more gold for the t6 mats for a decent stat combination (ex. berkserker, cleric, knight, solider, rampager. That means 51 to 74 gold a piece for equip anet said would be necessary to delve further into fractals. And of course it destroys the concept of easy stat equality that I loved in gw1.

Also new gear is hardly any new content, it just makes you repeat old content until you can afford it. They already made the new map and dungeon, they didn’t have to make ascended gear so grindy.

The precursors are one of the materials. So imo, they should be about as difficult to acquire as the gifts, which also require a lot of input. I don’t think is should be a ridiculous amount like 300g of course, but they shouldn’t be worthless either. Something like 50g worth, or a different method to acquire them that takes a good amount of time and/or effort just like the other components.

Why were secondary characters allowed to open it again o.O They should have account locked the chest.

If they do do this, the quest chain would either have to be very long and hard, or have a large monetary input, or both. If not, then precursors would be nearly worthless.

Mystfit.8309:

How could you do quested instances? I Mean I guess I don’t know how big some people’s groups were, but I swear we needed every signle person we had!

Actually what we needed was less people. The huge population caused the event to scale so much that we had lvl 84 champion and vet mobs running around that took longer to kill than the actual boss =/

From what I’ve heard, its just a standard DE reward.

How often does noll spawn? I still need his part.

I rotate through and spam the aoe skills (all 2, all 5) against groups, against single target I like to chain the ccs together. I also like to hide in the blinding could.

Seether.7285:

Navzar.2938:

Regarding elementalists, its more than “slightly”. Evasive arcana can’t blast finish at all anymore, so that wiped out any staff bunkers (and other staff builds). As for Mesmer, apparently their berserker phantasm now does less than half damage. And of course, we’ll be seeing far more bs thieves now…

Do you even play the game? How can you say staff bunkers are wiped out when they are still run by many teams.

I said staff bunkers.

boozer.7815:

ThiBash.5634:

boozer.7815:

The fun of this class for me is in demonstrating ways in which I can use the Ele’s abilities in combination with others and then in all of us reaping the benefits through teamwork. The fact is that the Staff Ele brings more combo field options to the table than any other class this game currently has today. Those can be used in any number of ways to turn your team into a powerhouse. That is what the Staff Ele is supposed to be doing, IMO.

We could do that very well with Evasive Arcana, and still perform our own combos.

You’d have had to have mastered Evasive Arcana play to truly appreciate why it was so much fun.

Think of it this way: staff elementalists used to be moving all over the place, dodging left and right and comboing (and missing combos) as much they could.

Now, our gameplay consists of standing in the back, placing a field every few seconds and hopefully see a heart appear in the distance.

Which sounds like it’d be more fun to do?

EA as it was used was deemed to be too OP. With it you could pop off absolutely insane combo’s giving yourself and your team way too much of the goodies we can dish out. Now that its gone we cant dish out quite so much goodness, or we have to work a lot harder to do it by ourselves. However, when coordinating with a team, you still lose a little bit (one less blast finisher option available to us), but you still have the potential to cap boons with a bit more work from your team mates.

That doesn’t mean it should have been removed completely, just reduced, and no one was complaining about the boons, only about the chain healing that made bunkers a pain to kill. … and once again, its far more than “one less blast finisher”. You have to consider its worth compared to other blast finishers like arcane wave, or dragon’s tooth (which we also lost, but not much complaint about that one).

You know it’s underpowered when using a staff is considered “doing something wrong”.

It’s not just one less blast finisher dude, it was the majority of a staff’s blast finishers and a significant portion of d/d and s/d finishers too. And no, the OP part wasn’t the boons, it was the healing from water fields, the boons weren’t a problem.

“Unintended feature”= exploit
But yeah, it was much too powerful for bunkers BUT that doesn’t mean the finishers should have been removed completely. We were all expected a nerf, but nothing this extreme.
As for skill he probably means outside of solo bunkers in spvp. For normal non bunker play, you had to do a lot of timing an positioning to ensure your party members benefited from the might stacks, or to heal a kiting ally (without making him stop).

Creslin.1758:

Dagger/dagger isn’t all that effected by its removal.

EA was good for comboing the fire fields to might stack.

The thing that was being exploited was the ability to double/tripple roll in water fields for 2-3x finishers without even changing elements. Of course a simple global cooldown could have fixed that…

Magnetic and RTL still bug out, they weren’t fixed yet, and EA was also used for might stacking, not just passive defense. Yes double water dodge was too much, most of us agree on that, but a finish ever 10sec would have been fine. And no one should be stupid enough to stand there for 3 seconds for dragon’s tooth to hit…

edit: Oh and 4-5k lightning strike is a complete lie. It crits 3k max on the light golem using with 3.2k attack and 62crit damage. only 1.3k usual on non crits, and 2.7k usual on crits.
If its the sigil’s lightning strike you’re talking about, then that’s available to all professions anyway.

Braxxus.2904:

Navzar.2938:

As for those glass eles you claim to be seeing,
snip
The ones that solo npc groups are bunker variants and just whittle down the npcs.

What in the 9 hells are you talking about? Glass eles? D/D ele’s are far from glass and that was my whole point.

Solo “NPC” groups? I was talking about groups of players. Who gives a flying kitten about NPCs? It’s kind of why I mentioned specifically soloing “groups of players”.

Perhaps more silly ele’s should go talk to the ele squad from PRO on FA and learn how to ele. Watch some videos of how to solo zergs and come away with multiple kills alive and at full health by the end of it.

So as not to be hypocritical I will go watch videos of warriors soloing zergs and coming away victorious….

If they ever exist.

Braxxus.2904:

I swear all these eles must run with like 30/30/10/0/0 builds in berserker gear or some crap.

Sorry, when I read this, I thought you were complaining about eles using this set up. It was late, so I didn’t really read that right…

In which case… ele bunkers taking down groups of players? LOL maybe if you’re in wvw against five lvl 10s with no skills . As well as they can bunker, there’s no way they could survive a group of equal level players, especially without a full out bunker build, that’s just kitten. Bunker builds STALL not kitten groups. And the part about eles not having survivability, if you would read, is saying that they would be squishy WITH LIGHTNING HAMMER. In case you didn’t realize, they can’t use their water heals, or their aoe kds, or shocking aura with that hammer equiped because it takes away their other skills while it’s on. So no, they won’t have their uber survivability, just what they get from their stats, which will be defensive, and their 2 utility.

Once again D/D is NOT lightning hammer. In lightning hammer, they are indeed far squishier than war by nature.

Demon.7832:

ilJumperMT.4871:

Rangers are still a joke

This

Eles and Necros have continuosly been getting their buffs and are now working great in TPvP, Rangers still don’t really have a place

Uh-uh Only ele conjures got buffed, and they’re still pretty weak. Besides conjure, it was just description fixes and nerfs.

Lava axe (1.2k crits) and earth shield(1defensive skill) are still worthless, no one will use them. Healing power doesn’t help ice bow- auto attack is a waste and replacing confusion with bleed means the damage is the same even with the 20% more condition duration, and its chills were nerfed anyway.

And finally, evasive arcana lost all blast finishes, so the entire playstyle was lost. That’s more than just bunkers mind you, but all staff builds and any /d might stacker were also nerfed.

Regarding elementalists, its more than “slightly”. Evasive arcana can’t blast finish at all anymore, so that wiped out any staff bunkers (and other staff builds). As for Mesmer, apparently their berserker phantasm now does less than half damage. And of course, we’ll be seeing far more bs thieves now…

Obviously unintended? Have you SEEN the animation on churning earth?

nvmvoidrays.2158:

yes, i’m keeping EA.

the dodge roll survivability from water is still good. i’m apparently the only person in the entirety of GW2 that read the healing ripple change too.

That only affects bunkers though. It doesn’t affect play style or efficiency of other builds, which is were a lot of the qq is coming from.

Braxxus.2904:

Wildclaw.6073:

still be as survivable as an elementalist

I freaking wish we were.
Dude, d/d ele is beast mode. Yes even after the patch. Quite possibly the only class that can consistantly solo groups of people in wvw (other than thieves abusing the culling issues).

I swear all these eles must run with like 30/30/10/0/0 builds in berserker gear or some crap.

Complaining about ele survivability… that’s like thieves complaining about escape tools. My god.

I think you’re confused. If we’re using lightning hammer, we can’t use our water attunement skills. Thus we lose most of our healing, yeah, a war will have more survivability using the hammer. As for those glass eles you claim to be seeing, they’re like paper when it comes to defense. They can only stay alive thanks to the mobility on d/d, which they also lose if they’re using the hammer. Even with that mobility they’re pretty squishy if you just hit them. The ones that solo npc groups are bunker variants and just whittle down the npcs.

Anarchium.8046:

Udyr.9283:

And in dungeons ele’s suck, except with evasive arcana build. To support and heal is our only viable role. Area swiftness, might, healing. But now that has been nerfed.

That may be the only way YOU can manage to play your elementalist in a dungeon, but don’t wave your hands around trying to represent the rest of us.

Stop looking at the class through such a narrow lens. Experiment with new playstyles — it’ll support many (many) more than people like you give credit. It can definitely fill both offensive and support roles but it requries different ways of playing both. Imagine that! If all you ever find in your hand is a staff, you’re probably doing it wrong. Just saying …

This type of post would mean something if you actually give suggestions. Also, support is more than just healing and it doesn’t mean you’re just supporting, you’ll obviously be fighting most of the time, it’s just that you’ll actually be able to support frequently as well.

You could always try the old shout support war.
Use vigorous shouts+ lung capacity in tactics , use 6 runes of the soldier, and shake it off+ for great justice as utilities.

Fireball base damage:314 Fireball cast time:1
Chain lightning base damage:203 Chain lightning cast time: .75

So fire ball deals roughly 1.5x damage per cast, bu 25% slower. .75 × 1.5=1.125 So fireball is 12.5% more damage vs a single target

TheMerc.4850:

Did bunker elementalists eat the big one in the “Big Patch”? Trying to figure out why so many angry elementalists are in here heh.

Mainly because there’s a thread in the ele forum linking to this one. But yeah, we got hit pretty hard. Evasive arcana now gives no blast finishers whatsoever, which is a huge blow to all the staff builds as well as /d might stacking, and destroying the mentioned staff bunker builds.

Fire ball> Air 1 for single target or 3+ target. Air 1 is only nice when its 2 targets since it hits the first one twice.

If you really must compare them, then you’ll have to compare your hammer skills+ a utility slot, and try to take the difference between class survivability into account as well.
Edit: Oh and using conjures, you also don’t get your weapon’s stat boosts anymore, only the +180prec and +5 crit damage.

Lightning hammer is actually considered one of the best conjures (excluding elite of course). The reason it isn’t considered overly strong by eles is because they can’t really use it well themselves since they’re inherently kind of squishy and it takes away their attunements. Another profession could use their conjures better than they could (perhaps not any more thanks to the buff though).

I think I understand your point of hammer auto not having any secondary effect like most other weapons, but comparing it to an ele utility isn’t really the best example. A utility weapon is supposed to outdo a primary weapon, or else it wouldn’t have any purpose.

edit: Oh and lightning storm isn’t really much utility, though its an aoe, its really weak so its not worth using.

Defektive.7283:

The post was supposed to be more focused on the utility the hammer brings for Ele vs. Warrior despite having basically the same attacks and comparable damage.

In a 1 to 1 comparison, the Ele Hammer brings more to the table.

Now how a person builds / traits etc. themselves ofcourse will alter a persons perception of a weapon. If I trait for Defense/Vit then even a GS will only tickle someone.

Once again, ele hammer is a utility skill. You’re asking why your auto attack isn’t as strong/useful as a utility skill…

“Why aren’t my auto attacks as strong as their utility skill?” /facepalm

Isn’t it just the hit-like-a-truck well spammer?

You answered your own question: because it takes up a utility skill. Besides, if you look at the rest of the skills, they aren’t very strong damage wise. Also, one of the incentives for conjure weapons is supposed to be allies being able to use them. If regular hammers were stronger, there’d be no point in that.

In short, it takes utility skill, only lasts 15 charges or 60sec and replaces your primary weapon skills. So of course it should be stronger than the primary weapon skills it’s replacing.

miklo.3610:

Navzar.2938:

miklo.3610:

EA was OP and it has been fixed. Stop complaining.

It had to be fixed, not nerfed to death. And it was only OP with water field finishers, and now all staff builds have been killed because it was the only thing keeping them floating. Think of the other things it affects, not just the one OP build.

I don’t think that staff builds are “dead”.

There’s no longer a reason to take them over a D/D or S/D now. Being worse in almost every situation practically means they’re dead. Only thing they’re better for is snaring and WvW.

miklo.3610:

EA was OP and it has been fixed. Stop complaining.

It had to be fixed, not nerfed to death. And it was only OP with water field finishers, and now all staff builds have been killed because it was the only thing keeping them floating. Think of the other things it affects, not just the one OP build.

EA is only good in water, but it’s kind of a pain having to switch to that attunement just to use it. Fire/air need a good radius buff imo, and earth should be 2~3 stacks with less time.

Furby.5693:

I think the removal of the “blast” is good. I think that the skill, in general, was too good and almost was required to be a complete build.

Guys, it’s just the blast. It still does damage, just not as much as it used to (or heal as much). If they didn’t get rid of the blast then I believe that they would have nerfed too many OTHER things to make it balanced…which would have nerfed those elementalists that don’t run 30 points arcana.

It’s a legit change that, in my opinion, was mostly warranted. Sure, I loved it—but it’s logical.

It wasn’t “just” the blast finisher. The blast finishers were the main point of using the trait, the damage was always negligible. That’s like removing the damage from dragon’s tooth or the stun on static field. There’s nothing “logical” about completely destroying a trait and most staff builds without some sort of other staff buff in return; especially when they had the option of just toning down the amount of finishes rather than completely removing them, which would also mean buff’s in other places wouldn’t be necessary.

Party wide? Yeah if they all stand on top of each other, in which case any aoe buff would be “party wide”. In case you haven’t realized, range is kind f important on an aoe, it’s not gonna be hitting the whole party.

Druitt.7629:

Someone was ragging on the new blast of Dragon’s Tooth, but it now works more intuitively, and lets you drop a Dragon’s Tooth over your group’s target and insert a water field under it to AoE heal.

I guess that you can’t use it on yourself anymore to stack some Might, but it always was a little strange that the blast occurred at you instead of where an enormous tooth fell and exploded.

You don’t have access to any water fields if you’re using a scepter. You’re party members will most likely not care enough to put a field there ,or just not think of it at all. You can still use it on yourself since you’ll probably close for the fire grab anyway.

I don’t suppose your hiding any staff builds too are you? XD

DiogoSilva.7089:

Strang.8170:

Staff got nerfed, it´s still viable though.

But the main thing this did is that s/d or d/d is now downright better in most cases.

They were nerfed too, as people used EA with them for might stacking.

They were nerfed too, but not nearly as much, hence better. They still have a few other options for blast finishers, but more importantly, they have more viable builds than combo finishers.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Nonlinear.9823:

DiogoSilva.7089:

A single trait that offers, in addition to four skills, four blast finishers, is broken in my humble opinion. Evasive Arcana got as big of a nerf as it was begging to.

I think it’s a good, balanced trait as it is now.

Spoken like a true fanboy. Are you taking a break from defending the new bait and switch gear treadmill to pick on the weakest class in the game?

Bunker eles were one of the strongest builds in the entire game before the patch. And they’re still good. Oh yeah.

That being said, it’s unfortunate that backstab thieves and bunker guardians’ nerfs weren’t in time for this patch.

Bunker eles being OP means bunker eles should be nerfed, not all staff ele builds in general. Besides, /d bunkers weren’t hit much at all.

DiogoSilva.7089:

A single trait that offers, in addition to four skills, four blast finishers, is broken in my humble opinion. Evasive Arcana got as big of a nerf as it was begging to.

I think it’s a good, balanced trait as it is now.

You say that as if you could use all the skills at once. Guess what, you couldn’t. You could use two at once at the cost of all endurance, which is kind of over powered, but all that it needed was a global cooldown. As it is now, its rather lackluster for a grandmaster trait. Why? Because it’s effect is less than the dodge distance. That means if you actually want it to hit, you’re losing the “dodge” part of dodging. Besides, the spells were weakened quite a bit, so they weren’t full fledged skills anyway.

DiogoSilva.7089:

That’s because that, when the game started, D/D was already “nerfed” and staff was already “broken”. Now they’re balanced.

No, they were both nerfed to heck when the game started, (and so was scepter). In case you didn’t pay attention, all ele damage was nerfed to 54% after BWE 2, fields were given less duration, and some cds were increased. It was far more than just D/D.

They could have at least buffed the dodge spells in exchange, they’re pretty pathetic without the finisher (exluding water, that one was ok).

Zaith.9132:

Navzar.2938:

At least you didn’t get nerfed, and they even said they plan to buff you more.

That’s extremely debatable if you’ve followed this subforum’s concerns.

That’s true, who knows how long it will take for traps to be fixed, and they haven’t really held their promise of strong buffs, but at least what you got was positive (excluding the trap bug in hopes that they do fix it quickly). Then again, I can only say this because I main an ele.

At least you didn’t get nerfed, and they even said they plan to buff you more.