Guild Wars 2

Soryuju.8164:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Soryuju.8164:

Not if you bring the trait Foot in the Grave and get stability that way. But that means you can’t bring Dhuumfire or Death Perception for the extra raw damage.

1) You shouldn’t need to take a specific trait just to compensate for inherently broken design. This destroys build diversity while skirting around the actual problems.

2) One 3-second stack of Stability isn’t going to help much anyways. That’ll get you through one skill if it’s not stripped and basically force you to always open Shroud with either #4 or #5. If you want to stay in Shroud for more than a few seconds doing anything besides autoattacking, good luck.

You’re overlooking the arching power creep issue.

While stability is vital for Necromancer, that’s only because there is so much CC everywhere on extremely low cooldowns. We now have AoE CC that is massive in size so in order to make up for it there is also stability everywhere.

Dragonhunter, druids, scrappers, reapers, revenants, chronomancers, all have an insane amount of CC on low cooldowns on their traits and skills.

I really don’t think I am overlooking the power creep, though. I’ve already agreed with you in a previous post that there’s too much CC in the game, and I also acknowledge that with the amount of power creep we’ve seen, nerfs need to come down across the board. But that’s not going to be a magical fix for Reaper’s Shroud if you just leave it filled with slow-casting, highly-telegraphed, melee range abilities with no way to protect those channels. When has a setup like that ever succeeded in this game? For context, if you tripled the channel times for each skill on a Warrior’s Hammer (which hasn’t changed much in recent patches), you’d get a similar set of channel times to what Reaper’s Shroud has (if you switched the skill order around). I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t have run that even prior to the specialization patch, let alone HoT. At least regular Death Shroud gives you range and shorter channels overall.

You also didn’t address my first point. Any response to that criticism?

Just to reiterate/clarify, I’m not against nerfing Reapers, or even against revamping professions to force them to actually sacrifice things when they spec for offense or defense. I just don’t think that this particular suggestion of yours is a good implementation of that theory.

I do agree with your point about Reapers keeping stability, however, it’s very unclear if keeping it would make Reapers too strong or if removing it is too weak. I’m basing this nerf solely on the fact Necromancers always did fine without strong stability before HoT, before there was ton of CC spam and beast-mode mobility.

Resistance won’t be as weak as you’d think, as it still provides immunity to fear, taunts and snares. That being said though, it’s nearly impossible to tell without proper testing, to many factors to consider for this one boon across CC of multiple classes.

Burtnik.5218:

Hire OP as a dev to balance this kittened game. Good ideas here that should be brought into game. Not sure if i agree with quickness on tempest tho.

I actually don’t agree with my own ideas this thread. The combat needs much more than a fix, it needs a complete rework to prevent future problems.

Soryuju.8164:

Not if you bring the trait Foot in the Grave and get stability that way. But that means you can’t bring Dhuumfire or Death Perception for the extra raw damage.

1) You shouldn’t need to take a specific trait just to compensate for inherently broken design. This destroys build diversity while skirting around the actual problems.

2) One 3-second stack of Stability isn’t going to help much anyways. That’ll get you through one skill if it’s not stripped and basically force you to always open Shroud with either #4 or #5. If you want to stay in Shroud for more than a few seconds doing anything besides autoattacking, good luck.

You’re overlooking the arching power creep issue.

While stability is vital for Necromancer, that’s only because there is so much CC everywhere on extremely low cooldowns. We now have AoE CC that is massive in size so in order to make up for it there is also stability everywhere.

Dragonhunter, druids, scrappers, reapers, revenants, chronomancers, all have an insane amount of CC on low cooldowns on their traits and skills.

zinkz.7045:

Don’t give up your day job, hammer scrapper is already pretty unremarkable when it comes to situations that don’t involve fighting on a point, so you want to make them even more sub-par in PvE, WvW, Stronghold, by making them even worse at closing the gap to the opponent by removing the stun on and increasing the cooldown on their main way to on CCing an opponent to get hammer damage on them, then topping that off by increasing the cooldown on what already is the probably the slowest gap closer in the game, absolutely clueless…

Er, Super Speed application and Cloaking Gyro, I haven’t touched those. If you need to close a lot of distance quickly, you still can. Oh and perma swiftness or natural swiftness from traits, you still have those. Seriously, only bad engineers have trouble closing distance.

And you are right about Scrappers being worthless in PvE and WvW, condi-engineers are simply stronger in those regards. But that requires a different thread.

Soryuju.8164:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Soryuju.8164:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I don’t play ele, so don’t take this opinion as weighty,

But I think starting off with a complete half effectiveness slash to healing on aura and then the outright removal of regen for torrents is a bit much for the first pass.

Yeah, they’re tanky as hell, but should probably start trimming on the upper end instead of reaching into their entrails and pulling out all the heals.

Don’t think Auramancers will be the only class that needs gutting. People freaking out like it’s the only big problem.

You wanna know what I’d do to Reapers? Increase all the Reaper shroud skills recharges to match Death Shroud, remove the Stability from Infusing Terror skill and replace it with Resistance, changed Deathly Chill trait to only damage nearby chilled foes (although the chill doesn’t have to be yours), the elite shout “Chilled to the bone” would have it’s range decreased by 300.

Worried about Elementalists not being tanky anymore? Boom. Now Reapers also gutted. Dragonhunters, Revenants, power gut. Druids get a nasty CC gutting, chronomancers gets tanking traits gutted and F4 replaced with F5, thieves and warriors might actually see some play.

_

The power creep is everywhere guys. I only talked about 4th of the stuff I’d do on the main post.

I can’t really speak to the Mesmer issues, but for Reaper, I feel like swapping Stability to Resistance on Infusing Terror would actually go directly against the Reaper’s design and be a terrible overall nerf to the spec. Maybe rebalance the duration/cooldown ratio if it becomes a problem in the post-nerf meta. Mind you, I’m a Guardian main who’s none too fond of the Reaper’s condition pressure, but the point of Reaper was to give Necros a melee option. Three of the five Reaper’s Shroud skills have extended channels/animations, and there’s no way a Reaper’s going to fight effectively in melee range when they’ve got no Stability, Vigor, blocks, evades, or the other defenses that core Necros have never enjoyed. At best, you could try to chain-CC targets with CttB/Terrify/Executioner’s Scythe and hope they don’t stun break in time to ruin your combo. Stability is a key part of that kit, and while less of it might be acceptable after global nerfs start coming down, removing it entirely could make Reaper unplayable.

As someone who’s dabbled in Scrapper, however, those nerf suggestions seem reasonable. It’s silly that any Marauder build can sustain better than a bunker Guardian can in this meta, but that’s where we’re at right now.

I understand how’d you think it’d hurt Reapers defense and yes, it really does. Reapers will have to take defensive traits in order to keep up.

As sucky as that sounds, that should be the case with ALL classes.

Wanna know what I’d do to Revenants? Revenants gain 2 seconds of super speed at the end of a dodge instead of stability, remove the super speed from Shiro’s Impossible Odds. And nerf X but I don’t want to hunt down the wiki page and go through all the problems.

Now if Revenants don’t want to be CC’ed to death, they got to bring Great Dwarf Stance or bring more defense. That’s how it SHOULD be.

Even if Reapers started speccing into Death/Blood Magic and bringing more defensive utilties, though, that doesn’t address the problems I was pointing out. 3 of the 5 Reaper’s Shroud abilities are slow casts that leave you mostly or entirely open to crowd control, and the animations on these skills are so obvious that you’ll struggle to land them even against casual players. I understand that you’re advocating a reduction to the amount of CC in the game as well (something I wholeheartedly agree with), but it’s backwards design not to pair all of those slow, painfully obvious casts with any reliable way of ensuring that they can land. Like I said, the best you could do would be to chain-CC a target with your Reaper and pray that they happen to be out of stun breaks (and don’t have any friends around who can CC you for them).

It’s less of an issue to adjust the amount of Stability stacks/uptime a Reaper can have, or their actual sustain so that they’re more dependent on their defensive trait lines to survive. Getting rid of Stability completely just sabotages the specialization’s design, however.

Not if you bring the trait Foot in the Grave and get stability that way. But that means you can’t bring Dhuumfire or Death Perception for the extra raw damage.

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Nova Stiker.8396:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Nova Stiker.8396:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Nova Stiker.8396:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I don’t play ele, so don’t take this opinion as weighty,

But I think starting off with a complete half effectiveness slash to healing on aura and then the outright removal of regen for torrents is a bit much for the first pass.

Yeah, they’re tanky as hell, but should probably start trimming on the upper end instead of reaching into their entrails and pulling out all the heals.

Don’t think Auramancers will be the only class that needs gutting. People freaking out like it’s the only big problem.

You wanna know what I’d do to Reapers? Increase all the Reaper shroud skills recharges to match Death Shroud, remove the Stability from Infusing Terror skill and replace it with Resistance, changed Deathly Chill trait to only damage nearby chilled foes (although the chill doesn’t have to be yours), the elite shout “Chilled to the bone” would have it’s range decreased by 300.

Worried about Elementalists not being tanky anymore? Boom. Now Reapers also gutted. Dragonhunters, Revenants, power gut. Druids get a nasty CC gutting, chronomancers gets tanking traits gutted and F4 replaced with F5, thieves and warriors might actually see some play.

_

The power creep is everywhere guys. I only talked about 4th of the stuff I’d do on the main post.

Replace F4 with F5?
Now THAT is insane.

In the words of that crazy Ith guy, NO.

At best I’ll hand F2 over to you.

Distortion is something every mesmer build needs. And that’s a good way to change Chrono from a trade off, to worthless.

It’s a learn to play issue. Be better at CC you are given with shield and gravity well.

It isn’t a learn to play issue.
IT IS THE ONLY WAY WE CAN SURVIVE BURST DAMAGE
Literally.
It is our only get out of jail free card. BLINK ISN’T A GET OUT OF JAIL FREE CARD.
A THIEF CAN FOLLOW THROUGH ON A BLINK
A 3 second block isn’t one either, we’d still have to pop a different stun break.
Dude, that is a nerf into the ground.
And I WILL quit were it to happen.

Then play Mesmer?

There is no reason for ArenaNet to have design Chronomancer to be Mesmer 2.0, I’d personally change all the F1-F3 shatters to do something different. But then it’d no longer be a fix.

Chrono would bring nothing to the table except well of gravity + some alacrity + the superspeed illusions.

Highlighted.

And you’re right. Chronomancer was the first revealed elite spec AND the worst designed.

The biggest problem with chronomancer is its terribly designed mechanics, but that is for a different thread. This is for fixes. You won’t have to worry about losing F4 if all the classes lose their ability to deal tons of damage and still be super tanky.

They don’t even have to be super tanky.
They literally have to be a zerker ranger.
“Oh I knocked you down, immobilized you, and then pressed 2.”
What do I do? Give up blink? Hell no.
Give up portal? Hell no.
Give up decoy for a condi clear? Well I guess I have to.
Or a panic strike thief.
“Oh I halved your health, immobilized you, and now I’m safely stabbing you”
Situations where I could normally survive.
And to fix what?
To remove 1-4 seconds of distortion from chronomancers? Generally just 1 second, as almost nobody does distortion on 3 clones.
Yeah, that was the real problem with the class.
How about just delete WoP and nerf Chaotic Dampening.
Everything else is a trade-off between another pick. With the possible exception of restorative illusions, which is an obvious pick if you’re going into inspiration. Mostly because focus sucks. Not because it’s an amazing trait.

In my opinion, if you want to go glass cannon mage assassin. Stay Mesmer.

If you want to be a utility mage, go chronomancer. You already said it yourself that chronomancer shatterspikers don’t even use shield and uses the traitline purely for better spikes. Which is a design problem.

Soryuju.8164:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I don’t play ele, so don’t take this opinion as weighty,

But I think starting off with a complete half effectiveness slash to healing on aura and then the outright removal of regen for torrents is a bit much for the first pass.

Yeah, they’re tanky as hell, but should probably start trimming on the upper end instead of reaching into their entrails and pulling out all the heals.

Don’t think Auramancers will be the only class that needs gutting. People freaking out like it’s the only big problem.

You wanna know what I’d do to Reapers? Increase all the Reaper shroud skills recharges to match Death Shroud, remove the Stability from Infusing Terror skill and replace it with Resistance, changed Deathly Chill trait to only damage nearby chilled foes (although the chill doesn’t have to be yours), the elite shout “Chilled to the bone” would have it’s range decreased by 300.

Worried about Elementalists not being tanky anymore? Boom. Now Reapers also gutted. Dragonhunters, Revenants, power gut. Druids get a nasty CC gutting, chronomancers gets tanking traits gutted and F4 replaced with F5, thieves and warriors might actually see some play.

_

The power creep is everywhere guys. I only talked about 4th of the stuff I’d do on the main post.

I can’t really speak to the Mesmer issues, but for Reaper, I feel like swapping Stability to Resistance on Infusing Terror would actually go directly against the Reaper’s design and be a terrible overall nerf to the spec. Maybe rebalance the duration/cooldown ratio if it becomes a problem in the post-nerf meta. Mind you, I’m a Guardian main who’s none too fond of the Reaper’s condition pressure, but the point of Reaper was to give Necros a melee option. Three of the five Reaper’s Shroud skills have extended channels/animations, and there’s no way a Reaper’s going to fight effectively in melee range when they’ve got no Stability, Vigor, blocks, evades, or the other defenses that core Necros have never enjoyed. At best, you could try to chain-CC targets with CttB/Terrify/Executioner’s Scythe and hope they don’t stun break in time to ruin your combo. Stability is a key part of that kit, and while less of it might be acceptable after global nerfs start coming down, removing it entirely could make Reaper unplayable.

As someone who’s dabbled in Scrapper, however, those nerf suggestions seem reasonable. It’s silly that any Marauder build can sustain better than a bunker Guardian can in this meta, but that’s where we’re at right now.

I understand how’d you think it’d hurt Reapers defense and yes, it really does. Reapers will have to take defensive traits in order to keep up.

As sucky as that sounds, that should be the case with ALL classes.

Wanna know what I’d do to Revenants? Revenants gain 2 seconds of super speed at the end of a dodge instead of stability, remove the super speed from Shiro’s Impossible Odds. And nerf X but I don’t want to hunt down the wiki page and go through all the problems.

Now if Revenants don’t want to be CC’ed to death, they got to bring Great Dwarf Stance or bring more defense. That’s how it SHOULD be.

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Nova Stiker.8396:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Nova Stiker.8396:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I don’t play ele, so don’t take this opinion as weighty,

But I think starting off with a complete half effectiveness slash to healing on aura and then the outright removal of regen for torrents is a bit much for the first pass.

Yeah, they’re tanky as hell, but should probably start trimming on the upper end instead of reaching into their entrails and pulling out all the heals.

Don’t think Auramancers will be the only class that needs gutting. People freaking out like it’s the only big problem.

You wanna know what I’d do to Reapers? Increase all the Reaper shroud skills recharges to match Death Shroud, remove the Stability from Infusing Terror skill and replace it with Resistance, changed Deathly Chill trait to only damage nearby chilled foes (although the chill doesn’t have to be yours), the elite shout “Chilled to the bone” would have it’s range decreased by 300.

Worried about Elementalists not being tanky anymore? Boom. Now Reapers also gutted. Dragonhunters, Revenants, power gut. Druids get a nasty CC gutting, chronomancers gets tanking traits gutted and F4 replaced with F5, thieves and warriors might actually see some play.

_

The power creep is everywhere guys. I only talked about 4th of the stuff I’d do on the main post.

Replace F4 with F5?
Now THAT is insane.

In the words of that crazy Ith guy, NO.

At best I’ll hand F2 over to you.

Distortion is something every mesmer build needs. And that’s a good way to change Chrono from a trade off, to worthless.

It’s a learn to play issue. Be better at CC you are given with shield and gravity well.

It isn’t a learn to play issue.
IT IS THE ONLY WAY WE CAN SURVIVE BURST DAMAGE
Literally.
It is our only get out of jail free card. BLINK ISN’T A GET OUT OF JAIL FREE CARD.
A THIEF CAN FOLLOW THROUGH ON A BLINK
A 3 second block isn’t one either, we’d still have to pop a different stun break.
Dude, that is a nerf into the ground.
And I WILL quit were it to happen.

Then play Mesmer?

There is no reason for ArenaNet to have design Chronomancer to be Mesmer 2.0, I’d personally change all the F1-F3 shatters to do something different. But then it’d no longer be a fix.

Chrono would bring nothing to the table except well of gravity + some alacrity + the superspeed illusions.

Highlighted.

And you’re right. Chronomancer was the first revealed elite spec AND the worst designed.

The biggest problem with chronomancer is its terribly designed mechanics, but that is for a different thread. This is for fixes. You won’t have to worry about losing F4 if all the classes lose their ability to deal tons of damage and still be super tanky. Ideally, if they are going to be hitting you with tons of damage, you’ll be able to hit back just as hard. Something this meta does not have.

Israel.7056:

Some others I would add

9.) regroup after a wipe.

I’ve seen so many games go completely sideways after the first major wipe because the team never really gets back on the map.

10.) Don’t get too spread out.

This kind of goes back to the point you make in 3 about greed. But I think it also relates to people’s fear of concentrating power into just two points aka “zerging.” Zerging around the map can work if you’re quick about it. Taking people off the map quickly and keeping them staggered is worth losing a cap from time to time imo.

This is good advice, but a lot of high end players already know these 2

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Nova Stiker.8396:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I don’t play ele, so don’t take this opinion as weighty,

But I think starting off with a complete half effectiveness slash to healing on aura and then the outright removal of regen for torrents is a bit much for the first pass.

Yeah, they’re tanky as hell, but should probably start trimming on the upper end instead of reaching into their entrails and pulling out all the heals.

Don’t think Auramancers will be the only class that needs gutting. People freaking out like it’s the only big problem.

You wanna know what I’d do to Reapers? Increase all the Reaper shroud skills recharges to match Death Shroud, remove the Stability from Infusing Terror skill and replace it with Resistance, changed Deathly Chill trait to only damage nearby chilled foes (although the chill doesn’t have to be yours), the elite shout “Chilled to the bone” would have it’s range decreased by 300.

Worried about Elementalists not being tanky anymore? Boom. Now Reapers also gutted. Dragonhunters, Revenants, power gut. Druids get a nasty CC gutting, chronomancers gets tanking traits gutted and F4 replaced with F5, thieves and warriors might actually see some play.

_

The power creep is everywhere guys. I only talked about 4th of the stuff I’d do on the main post.

Replace F4 with F5?
Now THAT is insane.

In the words of that crazy Ith guy, NO.

At best I’ll hand F2 over to you.

Distortion is something every mesmer build needs. And that’s a good way to change Chrono from a trade off, to worthless.

It’s a learn to play issue. Be better at CC you are given with shield and gravity well.

It isn’t a learn to play issue.
IT IS THE ONLY WAY WE CAN SURVIVE BURST DAMAGE
Literally.
It is our only get out of jail free card. BLINK ISN’T A GET OUT OF JAIL FREE CARD.
A THIEF CAN FOLLOW THROUGH ON A BLINK
A 3 second block isn’t one either, we’d still have to pop a different stun break.
Dude, that is a nerf into the ground.
And I WILL quit were it to happen.

Then play Mesmer?

There is no reason for ArenaNet to have design Chronomancer to be Mesmer 2.0, I’d personally change all the F1-F3 shatters to do something different. But then it’d no longer be a fix.

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I don’t play ele, so don’t take this opinion as weighty,

But I think starting off with a complete half effectiveness slash to healing on aura and then the outright removal of regen for torrents is a bit much for the first pass.

Yeah, they’re tanky as hell, but should probably start trimming on the upper end instead of reaching into their entrails and pulling out all the heals.

Don’t think Auramancers will be the only class that needs gutting. People freaking out like it’s the only big problem.

You wanna know what I’d do to Reapers? Increase all the Reaper shroud skills recharges to match Death Shroud, remove the Stability from Infusing Terror skill and replace it with Resistance, changed Deathly Chill trait to only damage nearby chilled foes (although the chill doesn’t have to be yours), the elite shout “Chilled to the bone” would have it’s range decreased by 300.

Worried about Elementalists not being tanky anymore? Boom. Now Reapers also gutted. Dragonhunters, Revenants, power gut. Druids get a nasty CC gutting, chronomancers gets tanking traits gutted and F4 replaced with F5, thieves and warriors might actually see some play.

_

The power creep is everywhere guys. I only talked about 4th of the stuff I’d do on the main post.

Replace F4 with F5?
Now THAT is insane.

In the words of that crazy Ith guy, NO.

At best I’ll hand F2 over to you.

Distortion is something every mesmer build needs. And that’s a good way to change Chrono from a trade off, to worthless.

It’s a learn to play issue. Be better at CC you are given with shield and gravity well.

“But everything has tons of stability!” You say, there is another problem that needs gutting.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I don’t play ele, so don’t take this opinion as weighty,

But I think starting off with a complete half effectiveness slash to healing on aura and then the outright removal of regen for torrents is a bit much for the first pass.

Yeah, they’re tanky as hell, but should probably start trimming on the upper end instead of reaching into their entrails and pulling out all the heals.

Don’t think Auramancers will be the only class that needs gutting. People freaking out like it’s the only big problem.

You wanna know what I’d do to Reapers? Increase all the Reaper shroud skills recharges to match Death Shroud, remove the Stability from Infusing Terror skill and replace it with Resistance, changed Deathly Chill trait to only damage nearby chilled foes (although the chill doesn’t have to be yours), the elite shout “Chilled to the bone” would have it’s range decreased by 300.

Worried about Elementalists not being tanky anymore? Boom. Now Reapers also gutted. Dragonhunters, Revenants, power gut. Druids get a nasty CC gutting, chronomancers gets tanking traits gutted and F4 replaced with F5, thieves and warriors might actually see some play.

_

The power creep is everywhere guys. I only talked about 4th of the stuff I’d do on the main post.

Frenk.5917:

“How to butcher other builds in other gamemodes because I don’t like something in SPVP” – volume II, by Nova Striker.

You are totally not aware that there are builds in other parts of the game which use the same traits setup of builds used in SPVP, are you? Well, congratulation on killing WvW tempest, PvE tempest and WvW Scrapper all at once.

How the heck does it kill PvE and WvW Tempest? If anything it makes it more powerful with increased boon duration you and your party can have a very strong upkeep of quickness. Regeneration really isn’t that super important in PvE or WvW zerging after all.

OH! You talking about being a glass cannon while still being a strong healer with Elemental Bastion! Um, no. Elemental Bastion is stupidly overpowered on how much it heals with so little investment into healing power. You can still be a super strong healer, but you now have to give up damage to achieve it.

Jesus, I butchered the Scrapper MUCH more than Tempest and yet people still defending the Tempest? Makes me wonder what people would say if I butchered the Reaper…

Alekt.5803:

Quickness on Aura?… For Elementalist? Please go away. Do you not know how useless quickness is on elementalist? Or imbalanced weapon-wise? There is no change with quickness if you cast eruption; it is still takes the same delay to explode. And quickness on overload actually result in a damage loss (ticks are not faster).

Elemental Bastion nerf. I suppose that you are also proposing buffs to the awful other grandmaster traits on Tempest? That’s a very nice way to cut marauder tempest. All this in your quest to nerf the effect on celestial by 10%, you nerf to oblivion builds that are way more interesting.

Invigorating Torrents. Vigor and Regen removed. That’s a nice way to just cut the potential condition clear. It is also a nice way to make Latent Stamina worthless (I don’t expect you to know that the ICD is only on the swapping portion).

Absolutely pathetic changes. You butcher an extremely wide variety of builds in collateral damages, break the current most used tempest builds, and leave tempest to be a flat steaming pile of nothing.

You don’t seem to know what hotfixing is… I said nothing about buffing for good reason. The things that are too strong are more of a problem than things that are too weak. I don’t have all day of typing for it to get ignored.

Marauder Tempest is not a thing in PvP and never will be as long as overcharging takes longer than a Meteor Shower. Latent Stamina is weak, I tried it, there is no reason to ever use it. Buff it? Sure, but not as important.

Also, quickness on an elementalist is not useless, proper timing with skills can make a massive difference as all auras have 0 casting time. Oh, and it’s 1 second of quickness when you apply an aura, WHICH MEANS YOUR ALLIES ALSO GET IT.
I think that is a very, very fair trade from perma regeneration and vigor.

1. Know your team comp, know your enemy comp, pick your split. A lot of matches can be lost just by poor decision at the start. Some people love to rush far and 1v1 people but sometimes it’s more important to escort and secure home. There is a bigger chance for the enemy player to 1v2 at your home point than fall back to mid, just because it takes 1 person to capture doesn’t mean you don’t need an escort. If you catch the enemy running far, you are already at a favorable advantage. Either he dies to the two or you or runs back mid where you’ll give chase. If the target is bunker, send the escort mid and have the two sleep on point.
Mid is more important to win quickly as it allows safer rotations.

2. Watch the enemy retreat, don’t chase into bad positioning. I cannot say how often this happens, you get an enemy low on health, he runs away and you give chase! You are so focused on that low health you don’t notice his 2 friends right next to your low target. Before you can even press 6, you are smashed in being out of position, are downed with none of your allies around to help. Let your target live if it forces you into a bad position, in high level play you will never get that kill if you are in a bad spot.
It doesn’t matter how bad your target is, how much he sucks, the fact is, you got played like a scrub.

3. Home > far point. This is such a dumb common mistake that is played at diamond level. I remember I was 1 pip from Diamond, we destroyed at mid point and instead of my 3 allies running to secure home who was contested, they all chase to far to catch the two people low on health. This puts your bunker at a very bad position that can go very poorly. He can run to help home, but that leaves mid open OR at far point will be an outnumbered 3v4 without a bunker. The bunker could follow far but that means mid AND home is vulnerable.
You’d think it would be common sense, but the greed is strong. Let them flee away, take the chance to help home quick and run back for the second clean up.

4. Be the hunted, not the hunter. This is the game thrower and it’s done at every level of play and yet it’s so easy to avoid. Predict your enemies movements, if you believe you are about to be swarmed at your point, leave it. Watch the respawning, if you notice you just captured a point, the point you are fighting at WILL be in trouble. Calculate your enemy movements, don’t just calculate yours. This is not World vs. World, you don’t always have to meet your enemy, be prepared let your enemy come to you. If you let your enemy meet you, that means you are ready and in good position.

5. Leave your bunker to 1v1 or 1v2 depending on what he is fighting. Seriously, if you have the point or if it is not taken, just leave him. If you know that your bunker will be safe, you are not needed. Go help a point you can more easily secure. Let your bunker do his job and do your job to kill.

6. If you are a bunker, direct your team movement. Sounds bossy? Remember, he is the guy you always want in a fight and he wants you to be in his fights as well. If your role is to kill people, work with the guy who’s role is to keep you alive. I’m not saying bunkers are always great at moving their team but victory does fall a lot on their shoulders. If he thinks far is a great place to go, you rush far. If he is pinging mid, stop what you are doing to run back mid. If he wants you to rush home, you rush home. Work with the guy who wants to keep you alive and in return he’ll give you lots of kills, pretty simple.

7. Rotate often, do not get collapsed on. If you are fighting on a point for too long, you already failed. The longer you are at a point the longer you give the enemy team a chance to collapse on you. Rotate to favorable positions, if you find your team across the map you are in a spot to lose, falling back to secured positions is a good strategy, spending 3-4 minutes fighting on a uncaptured far point is a terrible strategy.

8. Retreat properly. When in trouble your top priority is to run to your bunker, wherever he is. There is no reason to juke away from your enemy and teammates, flee to the guy who can save your butt, no detours, no wrap arounds, make a straight path to him.

9. Own your mistakes. If you died do not blame your team, while sometimes things are their fault, take a step back and think if you did everything right. Because if you DID do everything right, you wouldn’t be dead now would you? Reflect and fix.

10. Multi-role. I am the best with my Elementalist, but if I get into a team with 3 cele druids, I am no longer needed. You can lose games all because everyone didn’t have enough damage or you didn’t have enough defense. If you are playing bunker mesmer, your team has 3 bunker eles and your next best class is your warrior? Get. Your. Warrior. It doesn’t matter how under the bar warriors are, you are already at a massive disadvantage with 4 bunkers. If you are good with power ranger, bring it, doesn’t matter if it is complete cheese, it will contribute more to your team comp. The same can be said vise-versa, get good at classes and be able to fill multiple roles.

I got to diamond from mostly SoloQing not because of rules 1-9, but because of rule 10. Yet, there are still a lot of people who stick to 1 class no matter what. Don’t do that.

Manimarco Devil.1790:

It is amazing the lack of brainpower used in this thread when the OP is talking about well of precog being used to keep the Lord invulnerable and yet people are just justifying that by saying mesmers have already been nerfed.

Soa Cirri.6012:

Seyiwaji.4082:

Chronomancer are a big problem

They already got nerfed into the ground.

Blatantly false as mesmers still exist in all forms of play. They got nerfed slightly and mesmers act like their class got deleted.

Correction: Bad mesmers act like their class got deleted

style.6173:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Bad balance team that doesn’t listen to anyone.

That’s about it.

This^^. ANET isn’t trying to create poor balance. They just happen to have a balance team that isn’t very good.

How many of you remember Dhuumfire? The day of Dhuumfire when the PvP community got completely destroyed. Yeah… they ‘balanced’ necromancers from low tier to unbeatable God tier. Imagine the tanky chronobunker except able to kill you quickly and you got yourself Dhuumfire Terrormancers.

Fun fact: Diamond Skin was added to elementalists to counter the new necro Gods, it didn’t work

They couldn’t even design a hard counter to the stupidly overpowered terrormancer necros.

_

The balance team just sucks and refusing to listen to anyone just makes them worse.

Except it really is unfair.

I remember seeing a picture of someones first ranked game against a full premade Abjured (this is like week 2 of the season). Just recently someone posted that they got 3 amber players, against a full 5 ruby team.

Hell, just last night fighting match after match of ESL players, we suddenly got a game we absolutely dominated. Turns out, the entire opposing team as all sapphire. We were 2 diamonds and a ruby premade and they were all sapphire solo Qers? HOW?!

The fact is, the system really is busted and there is proof of it.

I don’t mind if it means lower queue times, but the issue is the opposing team gets a pip loss because of the completely unfair match making. The pip brackets really needs to be split into 3 divisions instead of 4.

I’ve noticed that the match maker goes full kittened sometimes.

I was queuing with my buddies (2 diamonds, 1 ruby) and we got 2 people with sapphire and yet we destroyed the opposing team.
Funny enough, the entire other team was sapphire.

Like… How?

There are a lot of broken things now, not just skills but core mechanics need fixing. But hey, why make a 20,000 word forum post on how to improve combat that no ArenaNet dev would read?
So here are my thoughts on hotfixing the meta.

Elementalist:
Elemental Bastion – Auras you apply heal allies. Apply a frost aura to yourself and nearby allies when struck while below the health threshold.
Healing: 778 -> 389 (50% reduction)
Scaling with Healing Power: 0.5 -> 1 (50% increase)

Invigorating Torrents – Auras you apply also grant regeneration and vigor. (5 seconds each)
Removed: Regeneration and Vigor.
Changed to: Auras you apply also grant 1 second of quickness.

Reasoning: Elemental Bastion will be slightly weaker on the Celestial Amulet (about 10% weaker) but also will stronger on other amulets, just aiming to be a slight nerf to the healing overall. Invigorating Torrents allowed elementalists and their teammates an infinite supply of regeneration and vigor. This gave Tempests significantly more defense outside of healing with each aura, instead of adding an internal cooldown to the infinite supply, it would be better to give the Tempest an alternative offensive tool. Overall Elementalists takes a decent dent into their sustain.

Scrapper:
Thunderclap: Ionize an area, bringing down the power of lightning to stun foes and damage them over its duration.
Changed: Stun -> Daze
Range: 1,200 -> 900
Recharge: 24 seconds -> 30 seconds

Rocket Charge: Dash forward with a rocket-charged hammer to damage enemies.
Recharge: 10 seconds -> 12 seconds

Equalizing Blow (3rd hammer auto-chain): Bring down your hammer on your foe.
Removed: Might, Vulnerability.
Casting time: 1/2 second -> 1 second
Added: Now a Blast Finisher.

Rapid Regeneration – Rapidly regenerate health while affected by swiftness or superspeed.
Healing from Swiftness: 105 -> 53 (50% reduction)
Healing from Super Speed: Superspeed: 470 – 235 (50% reduction)
Healing scaling from Swiftness: 0.04 -> 0.08 (100% increase)
Healing scaling from Super Speed: 0.16 -> 0.25 (56.25% increase)

Adaptive Armor: Gain stacking toughness when struck. Reduce incoming condition damage.
Scaling changed when struck: Gain 3% to your current toughness each stack.
Scaling changed when struck: Incoming condition damage reduced by 3% each stack.
Max stacks is still 5.

Impact Savant: The duration of your outgoing stuns and dazes are increased, and the duration of stuns and dazes applied to you are decreased.
Changed to: When you interrupt a foe, gain quickness. (2 seconds of quickness, 5 second cooldown)

Reason: The extra strong crowd control from Thunderclap with the sustain from traits made scrapper much tankier than it should be. With the same idea in mind, the scrapper must invest more into Healing Power to get a better sustaining result. The change to Impact Savant and Thunderclap also reflects as a reduction to sustain.

Whoa, I’m stopping right here. I doubt ArenaNet would even consider anything I’m saying let alone even read it. I gotta stop wasting my time…

Xillllix.3485:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Xillllix.3485:

They need to nerf condi and passive play, not Diamond Skin.

Hit the ele once or twice and its gone. Diamond skin only negates the engage condi.

If the ele didn’t fart out healing, this would be true.

That said, with only two condi builds seeing play, I’m not sure condi really needs a nerf. People just aren’t running cleanse.

Diamond Skin doesn’t need a nerf, it needs a rework.

Any class can bunk up and hold point, now because bunkering up it’s the only thing left the ele can do people are blaming bunker ele. If you nerf that you destroy the class.

Pretty much this, Dragonhunters, Scrappers, Revenants and Reapers can all do tons of damage, CC and sustain themselves.

If it wasn’t for ele’s or chronobunkers, the meta would be reduced to those 4 classes all running zerker/viper/cele specs.

Everything needs to be nerfed, not just diamond skin.

The issue with warrior has less to do about the warrior and more about the other classes.

Scrappers, Revenants, Dragonhunters and Reapers in particular are able to sustain themselves while dishing out lots of damage, something the warrior (and thief) is unable to do.

No, you cannot leave the PvP zone because

If they remove diamond skin Reapers will take elementalists completely out of the meta.

Berry Pun Pup.6904:

Rayden.3695:

The logic is as follows: Arenanet launched HoT without playtesting any single thing in a pvp setting

Fixed. Lol, no internal testing servers.

That’s a lie. There are internal testing servers.

But there are no testers

Bad balance team that doesn’t listen to anyone.

That’s about it.

Why have teamQ to begin with?

ReaperJr.5967:

Their mmr is already being inflated while queueing.

Still doesn’t mean jack.

Everything is so broken, from the combat, balance and even down to the base mechanics. ArenaNet, guys, you um… you want help there? Maybe I’m not seeing the calm in the storm but from my eyes things are a bit out of control.

It’s so crazy even the queuing is freaking out.

Huh, I don’t think you guys handled this well… I guess it’ll increase the chance of teams losing but you can easily play over 15 games in a single evening.

And the next 3 matches were ESL players abusing match making by bringing in lower tier friends on alt accounts.

Can we get a ban on these guys?

Hammerguard.9834:

Matchmaking gone full kitten.

Ruby 5 and 6 is the worst kittening thing. Once you get to Ruby 5 it’s only premades. I got to ruby 6 and got utterly screwed, 8 loses in a row because my MMR forced me against full premades.

ArenaNet why is this okay? ArenaNet tell me one reason why that is okay.

Of course Guild Wars 2 can never be an Esport, we’ve been saying that for years.

ArenaNets own designs shoot themselves in the foot. I cannot tell you how many times I got suspended from the forms for SUGGESTING healthy mechanics. I flat out gave up making suggestions on anything, it’s clear it’s their way or the highway.

ARENANET DOES NOT LISTEN and because of that the game is suffering heavily. It doesn’t matter what I say, it doesn’t matter what anyone says, it’s very clear they lack the mechanical design experience to create a great combat experience.

I don’t know how ArenaNet sleeps at night, when you had a stream chat filled with people booing ArenaNet throughout the entire ESL. Do they really think they got this? Do they really think they don’t need anyone or need to listen to anything? Game developer idiots. I’m not calling them morons to be mean, it’s fairly accurate. No well minded person would think a mob of 2000 stream viewers constantly screaming at them is okay.

Guild Wars 2 will kill itself at this rate and it has the developers to thank. Not only the severe unbalance issues but combat mechanics at their core ruins Guild Wars 2 ability to ever be an esport.

I cannot play in the evening anymore, because my MMR is screwing me over I am getting nothing but full premades.

THIS IS NOT OKAY ARENANET

We did it!

Evan Lesh.3295:

MMR updates immediately. Keep playing

Good to know, but it also means luck is playing a good part on the grinding :\

Does it change instantly or daily?

I’m 7 wins away from SoloQing to diamond and I think I found a trick to avoiding losing streaks completely. Maybe it’s luck, but I get far better teams and going against much weaker premades or no premades if I play until I go up a tier, then wait till the next reset.

This is important because if I have a losing streak, should I keep trying or should I wait? Because if MMR takes a while to update, losing 3 times in a row wouldn’t affect MMR at all and forces to keep losing. Then again, I could just be getting lucky.

ArenaNet is fully aware of how serious of a problem they made, if you watched the ESL stream, chat was just bashing ArenaNet for how horrible PvP is right now.

PowerBottom.5796:

less resistance on rev -> more necros -> more boonstrip -> less effective bunker mesmer….

That’s the best case scenario at least.

Pretty much this, I don’t think people understands how much of a nerf to the shield that is either.

MAN.9046:

Nova Stiker.8396:

MAN.9046:

\o/ ESPARTZ \O/

:D
EZPURTS?

YES ESPARTS!!!!1!1oNe
:D

MOAR EEEESPPPPURTZ

kdaddy.5431:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Pay Zero Counterplay 200k for giving everyone 15 minutes of their lives back!

it would of been great if everyone just danced for 15 minutes

That would have been more entertaining!

MAN.9046:

\o/ ESPARTZ \O/

:D
EZPURTS?

Pay Zero Counterplay 200k for giving everyone 15 minutes of their lives back!

EEEEEEEEESSSSPPPPUUUUUUUUUURTS

You guys missed it, chat was AWESOME. As for the games, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

rchu.8945:

at OP, what about diamond skin? Is that fine to you?

Diamond skin is also a massive balance problem, but it’s not a design problem. Diamond skin only affects other players and not much the elementalist itself.

A design problem for elementalist would be like Water Magic trait line as it offers the elementalist needs for survival. When you combine all survivability into one package you encounter a nasty problem. If ArenaNet really desires to balance Tempest, ideally they would move Powerful Auras to Arcana grandmaster line and remove the regen from the Tempest trait Invigorating Torrents, which sounds like not a big deal at first but that would mean elementalists lose the perma protection from earth magic and will be vulnerable to conditions at any point.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I’m rescinding my sarcastic comment on this thread and saving it for a later time, due to word from balance devs.

Yeah, still doesn’t help that all mesmer balance must consider any action being able to be preformed twice. All balance must consider Revenants 50% free boon duration and all balance must consider Reapers access to perma-chill.

If you compare Facet of Nature with the Warriors Signet of Rage, Facet of Nature has the same power as the warrior elite skill AND it comes with a bonus boon duration.

This is true. I’m not saying its fixed yet. I’m saying I’m willing to hold my complaints until I see how frequent this iterative balancing is.

The problem is it should have never have happened in the first place. No one looked at it and went, “maybe this is a bit much.”

Which is exactly what is wrong with Guild Wars 2 combat, too much of everything. Just look at raids, it was entirely designed with the mindset that 10 people have 25 stacks of might, perma fury, protection, regen and so on.

It doesn’t feel rewarding to get 25 stacks of might, protection, fury, regen because of how out of control all the mechanics are.

I can go on and on about what ArenaNet should do to start making a healthy combat system but meh, wasted words.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I’m rescinding my sarcastic comment on this thread and saving it for a later time, due to word from balance devs.

Yeah, still doesn’t help that all mesmer balance must consider any action being able to be preformed twice. All balance must consider Revenants 50% free boon duration and all balance must consider Reapers access to perma-chill.

If you compare Facet of Nature with the Warriors Signet of Rage, Facet of Nature has the same power as the warrior elite skill AND it comes with a bonus boon duration.

Jekkt.6045:

grouch, prevent capture point holding when under the effects of “well of precognition” or you will not change much in the current meta.

while i agree with some of the revenant changes (although others could have been implemented in a better way) the changes will still not do much against what’s ruining the meta.

- scrappers too tanky on marauder

- druid pets hitting too hard

- warrior basically useless

- chronomancer on point too strong

While all of those will still be around, the block duration reduction still does a lot to the bunker chrono defenses. Not to mention the fix to runes of durability will play a massive nerf to the duration of the mesmer boons.

Viper revs might not be viable after that Mallyx nerf, probably needs to go Rabids or Carrion.

Thank freaking Balthazar, these are actually pretty big nerfs.