Guild Wars 2

Evasive Arcana no longer gives any blast finishers, none at all. This also nerfs might stacking on D/D, S/D and staff, as well as all staff builds.

Another: Healing Ripple: This skill’s scaling with healing power has been reduced by 50% in PvP only

Finally, there was a stealth nerf on auras. Auras from fields no longer trigger elemental shielding or zephyr’s fury.

Arc.9374:

Staff bunkers needed to be toned down.

Yes, but to this extent? This just killed staff bunker, as well as its other builds, and any other ele build that used a combo field.

Only 3 skills and a trait were fixed, conjures +ER buffed, the rest were just description corrections or nerfs.

milo.6942:

Sorry but ele bunkers were a bit over the top previously.

I agree with this, that’s why we needed a small nerf.

But not removing the main function of evasive arcana (plus nerfing the healing at the same time). They were over the top because the blast finish activated even if the spell didn’t and because the finishes could be chained. All it would have needed was a global cooldown to prevent chaining.

Unfortunately, Lava axe is still useless (still low hits even with the buff), and earth shield is still mostly useless. Also, the stat buff only applies to you when you cast your spell and ends when you drop your conjured weapon. Picking up the other conjure doesn’t re apply the buff.

At least ice bow 4 is hitting harder now.

Condition builds are still viable.

I can’t believe they nerfed tornado even more. Evasive arcana just sucks now, I thought the unintended finishes were the ones without the spell casting -.- I guess we lost our only place in pvp. At least d/d hybrids should still be OK.

The conjures increase stats by 180 each, except for crit damage, which is 5%, and fiery greatsword’s power is +260.

Furienify.5738:

Gorge Express.7163:

Evasive Arcana: This trait no longer creates unintended blast finishers.

So it WAS a bug..

This was one hell of a nerf.

Probably brought on by PvP, no less.

I’m fairly certain/hope this only applies to the blast finish without a spell. Nevermind, all gone. Huge kittening nerf.

“Elementalists are a total faceroll class.”
“I love the rainbow effects on my legendary.”
“They fixed the pathing on RTL”

Btw, apparently, necros CAN burst using wells or something. Just throwing that out there.

Please remove the price of respeccing trait points. While I understand this is supposed to be a gold sink, all it really does it stop people from playing around with build options while actually testing them (sure you can use the mists, but targets don’t fight back). IMO, the importance of build is the closest thing this game was with GW1, and adding a fee to respect just limits people’s build creativity.

While the fee may appear to be small, that’s only if you know what build you want. If you want to test builds looking for a magic combination that suits you, you could be going through around 20, and that’s nearly one gold. Besides, I feel people really need to learn how to make their own builds instead of just copying others, and having something deter building testing doesn’t help that.

I feel making CnD instant would just lead to more complaints. Making steal interrupt an action wouldn’t really nerf much besides bs chain imo.

Garlic Sensei.4103:

might be another ninja nerf. its getting common as of lately. and the only class getting ninja nerfed.

Nah, ele’s RTL was ninja nerfed a while back, it can’t be used for air travel nearly as well any more.

God Sealer.4103:

hellfish.6740:

God Sealer.4103:

hellfish.6740:

Backstab isn’t fine. Neither is stealth. Both skills need to be nerfed to the ground.

What profession you play?

Elem

Scepter/Dagger, Dagger/Dagger has just as much burst, if not more than a backstab thief. If you are roaming around with a staff, your own fault. The fact you can’t see them is the issue, there damage is ON PAR with other classes burst specs.

D/D: Ride the Lightning->Updraft->Burning Speed
S/D: Dragon tooth->Phoenix->Fire Grab. 3 Moves, just as there combo, will do the same if not more damage, only difference is you’re visable. Thus stealth is the kitten puppy hampster chupacabra issue!

Dragon tooh>Phonix>fire grab has the same damage but takes much longer. BS burst takes .5 sec. Signet of earth (since you can’t pre cast it like basilik’s) is 3/4 sec, and is dodgeable, all you have to do is see the animation of the elementalist’s head. So Signet of earth>Drag tooth>Phoenix>fire grab is a delayed burst that takes 8 times as long and can be fixed by any condition removal, has flashy warning signs, and gives you 4 seconds to react. Compare that to an undodgable .5sec burst that does the same damage, and has the same counters -condition removal. On top of that, thief also has more armor, and stealth as defensive mechanisms while still having similar mobility. So while the damage is on par, the burst itself is far from equal.

edit: also RTL>Updraft>Burning speed is far from equal damage, its a bit less than 3/5 the damage, and once again, much longer.

baalblade.8465:

Navzar.2938:

The trait affects the adept minor traits of the other elements, in other words it affects:
Stone Flesh
Normally each one is only active in its elemental attunement. If you have this trait, you retain the effect for 5 seconds after swapping out of its attunement.

Which is what i hope for but Stone Flesh not affected at all (just tested in heart of Mist) As for Zephyr Speed, it’s impossible to test that.

It’s what its supposed to do, but like a lot of other things, its bugged

Possibly problematic: Speed, Jump, Fall Damage decrease- these are might not affect combat directly at a glance, but higher jump/less fall damage would allow people to use routes others cannot or escape a battle more easily. And it would also open up possible shortcuts/exploits in dungeons again. Speed would also lead to some elitism during dungeons or wvw, because travel time between battles is important for speed clears, and because combat mode isn’t combat mode doesn’t start til your hit, so until then its a boost for kiting/avoiding mobs.

Flight: I feel flight can have problems with the way the game is currently built, since it might allow people to skip over things they shouldn’t be able to. No flight zones might fix this though. Obviously no flight in pvp/wvw
Mounts:These aren’t really necessary and either fall under the speed or flight category. Mounts for just visual/fun purposes would be okay.

Permanent Gathering Tools: I would like the convenience of tools not taking up space so I wouldn’t have to keep running to a merchant to repurchase them. However, permanent ones would either have to be expensive, so just semi permanent- you can just keep stacking unlimited charges or something on them. Making tools stackable would have the same affect.

Titles: Please make more noticable
More Interaction with Minis: YES. This would be awesome.
Collectibles: This would also be a nice way to introduce some rare item skins as well as scavenger hunts/boss bounties for parts and materials.

I personally don’t see anything wrong with a 5man group capturing a tower if its unguarded.

Azaziel.3608:

They should be stronger when a server is outnumbered…
But in general, players should be the ones actually guarding the points.

And this is also a very nice idea. Also when a server is in possession of a low number of structures, an area should have more/stronger guards.

I think their purpose is to prevent single players from capping towers easily, not to actually slow a zerg. Seeing as its WvW, arena net probably intends for players to do most of the defending.

The trait affects the adept minor traits of the other elements, in other words it affects:
Soothing Mist, Stone Flesh,Zephyr’s Speed and Flame Barrier.
Normally each one is only active in its elemental attunement. If you have this trait, you retain the effect for 5 seconds after swapping out of its attunement.

P.S. You’re probably just seeing +boon duration on Elemental Shielding, seeing as gaining 3 sec of protection when you use an aura has nothing to do with your attunement.

The fact that some classes are “easy mode” and others are “hard mode” already shows unbalance imo.

P.S. It’s not really that complicated, I don’t think that’s the issue.

I think shocking aura is perfectly fine. Fire shield is what needs buffing. Suggested change: buff duration to 5sec, additional effect: apply 1 second burn to foes in melee range every second.

Arc.9374:

The thing that most people forget is that with Bountiful Power (25pt water), you easily make up the loss of the 200odd power you lose from not putting points in fire simply by having 10%+ perma damage boost in combat due to boon uptime, which more than makes up for it, in addition to lending you a huge amount of survivability.

Please tell me how you’re keeping up 5 boons, I’d love to know

Tornado needs a major rework, too easy to dodge and little damage. Making it draw in like whirpool would fix it imo.

Reducing the aoe cap probably isn’t the best way to go because of WvW/pve farming that would result from it, and it doesn’t make much difference in spvp.

As for whirlpool, a small defensive buff for the 33% nerf would have been nice.

Btw, I just wanted to make sure, but OP you have played other classes as well right? Because pve is always easy (for the most part) so “unbalanced” is only in regards to how good it is compared to other classes.

Atomic, its because it would buff ele bunkers even more by allowing them to add yet another blast combo to their water fields.

Outside of getting full exotics, I feel like the most helpful thing is learning the aggro range of each enemy so you can avoid over pulling.

I feel like staff is mainly about fields, so 30 arcane for blasting staff and evasive arcana traits. Arcane wave is pretty much stapled on the skill bar and you’ll probably want to bring a cantrip for areas with knockdown. After that though, I feel like its up to you.

I personally add 20 in fire and 20 in air for damage and glyph traits, and I take renewing stamina for more combo dodges.

I predict less burst capability, but more sustained damage.

It doesn’t really need the debuffs. Take them out and you pretty much just have an alternate version of warrior’s signet of rage.

Rayya.2591:

Nautika.5376:

We want unbalanced game play fixed.. You can perma stealth while killing someone 100-0 that is NOT supposed to happen.

It really is not fair when a Thief can 100-0 someone and they can’t even see them to target them, it is like those stupid 100-0 stunlocks in the game that shall not be mentioned.

all is fair in love and war

Then shouldn’t nerfing thieves be fair too? :p
But seriously, the “perma” stealth thing shouldn’t be a problem after they fix the rendering issues. So its a visual fix you want on stealth, not a nerf.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cantrip

XodoK.8734:

OP. This has been discussed to death. The issue is that everything you do on Ele you can do many times faster and easier on other profs.

This.

I’m also under the opinion that if person 1 is far more skill than person 2, then person 1 should be winning, not equal.

Besides, balancing around the very best- like no one ever was, invites a lot of rage when there’s a really high skill cap.

For a moment there I thought someone just necroed a thread :p Guess I’ll give it another read ^^
Could you perhaps show which parts where updated?
Edit: why do you want geyser nerfed?

Loading.4503:

I like how people say well u can see a killshot from that far and dodge it, but apparently you can’t see a thief that’s even closer before he can cast steal and try to do something about it. And let’s not count that bug with the piercing, and lets say everyone is 80 with good armor, so kill shot hits 8k? And pierces 3 ppl, that’s 24k dmg in 1 button compared to a thief bs combo. And since everyone complains about a bs combo being 1.75 seconds is too fast but anything else twice as long needs a buff, can I go omg I button piercing 3 ppl is op but a bs combo pressing 4 buttons ontop of me running behind someone needs a buff?

The war actually has to hit things to build up adren for the kill shot, that’s how you know about it, he’ll be hitting people. As for you won’t see it because its in WvW; well guess what? You won’t see any skill going off because of the chaos.

No one complains about 1.75bs combo being too fast. Bs is a >.5sec combo (no quickness) , they complain about >.5sec bs combo being too fast. A single 8k bs or ks is also not OP, however, ks probably shouldn’t pierce. 8k on however many it can reach seems kind of excessive .

Wow if you’re going to be so nit picky, then bs has 100% crit chance from stealth. You will have the 6+ initiative on you’re initial backstab.
Daggers may have lower damage, but they can use two sigils to make up for it (like 5% extra damage and 30% lightning strike on crit).
And lastly, we’re not talking about GS, we’re talking about rifle’s kill shot.

Fire 1 on D/D may as well be single, its very weak if you split it up, but yeah I get your point. But D/D still has those aoes (like the breaths, and lightning whip(used to be single) that hit smaller aoes and have stronger dps in exchange, making it good for 1v1. And their 1v1/few skills are much better dps, particularly dragon’s claw and lightning whip.
…And I wouldn’t count auras since their mostly defensive.
Point is that it’s good 1v1 and 1vMany. The short range drawback I feel is mitigated by the damage buffing/mobility. But yeah, I guess Instead of wanting more single target skills specifically, I just want slightly better 1vfew skills…

The main reason I want a few single target skills on air is because atm, you’re better off spamming fireball in most situations than using air for damage. I think that’s sad. The rare exception is when fighting 2 enemies, because the first target will be hit twice from chain lightning. Basically, air is overshadowed, so I figured the easiest fix would be to go with the official description of air magic and make it single target.

Technically almost all melee is aoe too, because it has a hit radius that can catch multiple enemies, but they’re effectively 1v1s.

Daecollo.9578:

792 is increased by 3% if you have it traited (which you will if you use rifles for 30% critical damage bonus..), which is 815 damage, 9 more damage then backstab.

There are many ways to get your adrenaline back instantly.

Because that 9 makes such a difference… but since we’re at this.

Thief has many % damage increases too, 10% while enemy suffers from conditions, 5% extra from daggers 10% with 6+ initiative, and maybe 5% are all used in the same bs build, for a base total of 30%., or 50% while under 50% hp (but that’s only for half a kill if they don’t heal. So averages 40% I guess.

War: 12% at full adren (not sure if its calculated before or after the burst reduces the bar), 10% while enemy is bleeding, 4.4 from stick and move, 0-30% from trait line for bursts. However, you can’t use all that at the same time, you’ll have to give up something. Best possible would be extra 52%, but you’ll lose out on about 200 power.

So yeah, they’re still about the same damage wise.

Kill shot has a base power of 792 at max adrenaline. Backstab has a base power of 806 from behind. So no, its not OP when working properly, neither is a lone backstab. Although it is a ranged bs, the 1.75cast and having to gather adrenaline make up for that (imo). As others stated, its the bs combo that’s OP, not backstab.
Also, to a glass cannon, stealth and mobility definitely cover 8k hp and the armor difference.
Wars have some very OP bugs that need fixing…

Turn off auto attack (ctr right click).

Curring.9752:

They’re more escape mechanics than active defense, for example if a thief gets low they need to stealth to run, they can’t use the stealth to stay in the fight longer (Well could be arguable at the moment due to the rendering bug) they have to use it to escape whereas Ele’s active defense keeps them alive and last longer and if you’re D/D you still have decent escape mechanics. Most of the time thief’s have less armour than us and Ele’s damage is more about sustainability, in fact the whole class revolves around sustainability.

Thieves don’t have to stealth to run, they just need to use their warps. Either using shadowstep (utility) or far more common, by switching to a shortbow and using skil 5. Thieves inherently have more armor, they just tend to have less because dps is viable for them. Of course eles with /d are skill more mobile thanks to RTL, but its not like thieves aren’t. Stealth is just a nice bonus to use before a warp.

Kerithlan.1659:

While I understand your frustration I feel as though you’ve artificially inflated the problem for the sake of your argument.

Rather than running down the list of every skill I just want to point out that there’s no reason why 3/5 fire skills, 3/5 water skills, 4/5 air skills and 2/5 earth skills aren’t viable as single-target abilities.

You’re also disingenuous about the number of single-target skills the staff has. It has five, in fact: Fireball, Water Blast, Lightning Surge, Stoning and Shockwave. Each of these skills targets a single foe, damages it, and in the case of the non-earth skills provides a bonus after-effect. Fireball dealing splash damage doesn’t make it any less of a single-target ability: it makes it a single target ability with conditional splash.

Having said that, elementalist overall is a bit “soft” so to speak. Even if the staff is tweaked it doesn’t highlight some of the underlying problems, such as how difficult soloing is compared to other professions.

If the staff absolutely must be changed (and nothing else), here are my suggestions:

1. Chain Lightning should deal much more damage than it currently does, but to compensate have the damage split evenly across its targets. For some fake example numbers, let’s say that it deals 600 damage to a single target. If there’s two targets have it deal 300 to each, and if there’s three have it deal 200 damage to each.

2. Lightning Surge should stun your target for either 0.5 or 1.0 seconds as well as blinding it. Nearby foes should be blinded for a shorter duration.

3. Gust should cause additional damage or knockback if it only hits a single opponent.

4. Stoning should cause a minor knockback or interrupt if the target is crippled or immobilized. The projectile should move faster.

5. Unsteady Ground should interrupt/trip if the opponent is weakened or immobilized.

These changes would make the elementalist a bit more viable in terms of dueling and single-target control without horribly destroying their multi-target potential (or even really changing how the current state of things operates). Earth is overall fairly weak compared to Fire and Air (since 1 is kind of bad, 3 is a shield and 2/4 can be unreliable/slow), so we can create a fair balance by improving its inter-skill synergies and kiting. Specifically though the focus would be on making Air a bit stronger against single targets.

I think the problem is that aoes are weaker or have some sort of draw back in exchange for the area (which is very reasonable), but OP would like some single target options as well to balance out the staff (all other ele sets have both single target and aoe)
Also, fireball, lightning surge and schockwave are aoes, even if they need a target to use well (excluding shockwave). Fireball is 120 radius, and surge is 120, up to 240 with blasting staff. The aoe on these isn’t conditional at all, its always there, thus they’re the definition of aoe. Fireball doesn’t even need a direct hit for its aoe. Waterblast is single target damage, yes, but the damage is so low that the skill is really only used for the healing, so I woulnd’t even count it as attacking. As far as suggest 3 goes, gust is a single target skill so there isn’t much “if”.
You’re suggestions are pretty interesting, buffing single target while somehow keeping the aoe isn’t something I would have thought of.

Earth bleeds as well as blinding. Air just has multiple strikes like a small meteor shower. Best off sticking to earth/water for now.

I’ll miss fighting as part of the weekend night crew on Gunnar’s :’( good luck, it was great playing with you guys.

Aviate.9457:

I am so SICK of everyone complaining about thieves, we have been nerfed countless times …

I count 4skills.

@OP, have you tried actually standing inside your traps. If its a burst thief, he won’t be able to take it and it’ll probably kill him. Overall, you’ll just need more pointblank aoe. If he’s not using condition removal, then just follow the damage ticks.
If he’s a tank thief using condition removal and high hp/toughness, his damage won’t too strong, so you can just move along, it’s usually a bad idea to fight bunkers. Unfortunately, I don’t have much ranger experience, so I can’t suggest anything specific.

I do have to agree that this sounds more like a ranger problem, you’re better off trying the ranger forum.

Why so much hate on this? Eles do need a buff, and it wouldn’t be “powerful” 1 person options, just moderate. Other weapon combinations have strong single target as well as aoe options.

I strongly agree to this. Air is described on the site as single target damage, and that’s what it should. I think air 1 should always hit hit for as much as fireball, but keep the 3/4 cast time and only hit 1 target. Air 2 should be a 1sec cast time, and only hit 1 target.

Because honestly, you may as well stay in fire for single target dps, air is kind of useless outside of swiftness and static field.

silvermember.8941:

Google Gstar 2011 guild wars 2 pvp. That’s why we have the lowest HP.

Unfortunately that’s no longer the case

I’d prefer WvW rewards be earned in WvW.

So… any place I could find a summary of this now that it’s over?

To clarify, I meant damage not received through combat, like the lasers or flaming boulders; things that take you straight from 100% hp to defeated no matter your stats. If you’re in a higher level zone and get one shot, then you should still have armor broken.

Originally, we had extremely high dps, and the lowest hp/armor was set to balance that.

As per the title, I don’t think instant deaths should break armor. Falls already don’t break armor, so I don’t see any reason why this can’t be done. Armor doesn’t play any part in instant death things, so I don’t think it should be broken from them. If its some sort of trap people can see, they’ll just remove their armor anyway to avoid the penalty. If they can’t be aware of it, then I think its unfair for them to get their armor broken since they didn’t have a chance. For example, most instances will kick you out or warp you back if you go too far outside them, but others (such as the Snaff Memorial Lab) will just instantly kill you and break your armor.
This isn’t a big deal, but I feel like it would be an easy change.