Guild Wars 2

Pawstruck.9708:

I think blind on burning is freaking awesome. Get an ele and a thief in a dungeon and never get hit by anything ever.

But if you’re already 30 in fire persisting flames is automatically better

I was trying out the new stuff today, when I realized I had played staff for so long that I lacked the muscle memory for any other weapon, so my opinion is solely based on staff until I can remember how to play anything else

Stone heart feels great, honestly, especially while conjuring, but blinding ashes is somewhat lacking. Aquatic ben and elemental contingency were just off the table from the start, as was whatever the interruption trait is (too much investment to unlock something I have so little interest in).

The ring on meteor shower changes nothing, really. I think the ring is too big for people to see haha.

How do you guys feel about it?

P.S. New infiltrator runes were pretty fun with the 12% damage to >50% and cloak threshold doubled, not sure if I should keep them though.

Yeah, I’ve tried it out, not worth anything.

Sons.5493:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

I need to watch this again, with some ahem herbal remedies.

Of course I mean tea, why are you looking at me like that?

420 in a few days, blaze it then

Me and Mary Jane will be spending some quality time together this Easter.

I’m going to try out some weird builds myself, especially a 30/0/30/0/10 conjure build (someday conjures will be good, and that might be todaymorrow whenever the kitten patch comes out) with both new traits and renewing stamina.
I don’t think I’ll be taking earth shield though, nor will I be running bunker stats (honestly I run with half the survivability of this build in zerker gear). I’ll probably be doing s/f as well, but I might hold onto staff because conjures on the whole lack consistent control (outside of earth shield, but I hate that thing). FB+LA+LH will be interesting, with tons of mobility between LA and LH, as well as a few fields and finishers.
I might even switch to puissance at some point for the lulz of having a defense mode and an offense mode, because Yugi-Oh.

Maugetarr.6823:

Zero Day.2594:

Burnfall.9573:

Zero Day, both are indeed old videos and guess what?

Only one of them remain viable and un-nerfed since than.

guess which one it is?? i know you will deny it: again and again yet the Truth stand.

hints: Sword/Dagger, OP condition short bow, unbalanced/God-Mode/OP design. mechanics, utilities and traits, unlimited-area 360 degree teleporting position, perma-evades, perma/stealths, perma-spams, cheap-zero-low-skill class requirements, only survivalist zerker class.

Ah! Okay!

Here’s another video,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFBCqatHTcY

From Feb. 7th, 2014…. Just for you i checked all the patch notes (wiki as them), and there werent any changes since then. So this build is still active.
Clearly OP too, says so in the video… and just watch how he massacres everyone in that video…. OOOOO PPPPPP….
And at 2:13/2:20… He killed a thief! …. I mean if everyone says thieves are OP…. well ranger are more OP since this video just proves that they can kill them…. Right?

@Maug
lol… it’s fine… youtube has so many videos…. I wonder if he can come up with an excuse for each one. And tbh, I’m just being silly, like always… And after all… we all love Burnfall and Sundeskal (hope i got it right this time…. haven’t seen him around).

Thankyou Zero Day for exposing the truth about rangers. Look al all the perma evades and permaburning and permapoison the OP ranger oppressors have access to.

How long have we been lied to that rangers are underpowered?

How long will ANet show favoritism toward the golden child ranger?

Rise up and shout the truth about rangers from the highest mountains

How long will rangers and condition guards dominate the lesser classes?

No more I say

This highlight video has removed the wool placed in front of my eyes by a class of deceivers!

As the saying goes:
“How can we trust the lies of the rangers who have stolen the precious CDI topic to gain even greater power?”

Oh my god I love you.
Ahem
Oh my god I love you.

I know, I’m excited too!
I can’t wait to play with all my shiny new toys

I need to watch this again, with some ahem herbal remedies.

Of course I mean tea, why are you looking at me like that?

Zero Day.2594:

Maugetarr.6823:

He probably cares about fun too though. Thief and (shatter) mesmer are the most fun to me, and I’d have to say that both are in a pretty decent spot right now. If he’s talking about the sirlin article though playing to win is still relevant as it talks about using strategies people don’t know how to counter until they figure out how to counter it. Until they figure out how to counter it, it’s something you can rely on to finish the fight pretty quickly so you can move on to the next fight or turn the tide for your group fight.

Heh thanks. Couldn’t come up with a better response last night. Although, every balance patch, is a bit disappointing… and it does make me slowly stop caring… I doubt they will ever balance it out such that a good majority is happy, and all classes can fulfill all/most roles.

Weirdly, after reading that article, maybe I was too influenced by it… But I actually started to see people (here and on other games) that would give themselves limits that would prevent them from overcoming something they deem OP.

:D Oh P Fun, I do have fun, and because it’s a term with so many meanings, I doubt we’re having the same fun.

Oh that’s perfectly fine! That’s part of what my point was, in that while I don’t have the same type of fun as you, I don’t particularly think that having fun just from winning is wrong at all.
But for me, I don’t get a sense of satisfaction purely from winning. In order for me to really have fun, there has to be the sense of a challenge, that could go either way. I really dislike knowing the probable outcome of a fight before it happens (though I do get some catharsis from stomping idiots). I don’t have fun playing my guardian in PvE because I literally can just walk up to multiple mobs and auto them to death without so much as dodging. Conversely, I have tons of fun in PvP as an ele, because if I screw up I lose, and I can pull of some awesome plays that let me win without flat out destroying the other guy.
Honestly, there is nothing wrong with playing solely to win, I just don’t think it has very much bearing on balance in general.
Let me get this straight here. I am not calling anything overpowered, I am not saying using something overpowered is wrong, and I am certainly not saying anything is uncounterable. What I am saying is that, if you only care about winning, you will have roughly the same amount of fun no matter how balance is skewed, so why care about balance?

Edit: Thread successfully derailed
Sorry OP

abomally.2694:

nathan goossen.9546:

oki so with staff you got more room for dodgeing then for instance when your meleeing

oki got now an updated build
full zerker with battle sigil and vigoures renewal

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vEAQFAWhUMaZW5wsBfEBApAKhHEwQBiCWUUsTOA-zgxAYLASEQyrIasF3ioxqrxUuER1ECI0WA-e

hope this is better for dmg

Well…it’s great for damage; but with that gear certain veteran mobs will one-shot you. 12K health and 1800 armor means you will die – a lot.

Your armor itself will work, but I recommend changing your accessories (rings, amulet, etc.) to add some vitality and toughness. Yeah, you’ll lose some damage & crit, but a dead ele does no damage. Experiment a bit until you find stats you are comfortable with.

On my ele I prefer 18K+ health and 2100-2200 armor for good survivability. Of course, other players will have their own ideas about what feels right and not everyone plays exactly the same.

Yeah, I personally am pretty comfortable at about 14k health, down from 16k a few months ago. It lets me pull of my full “omgwtfthatwasatonofdamage” waterblast combo with time to spare, but also gives me the pretty numbers I want

I haven’t commented on stealth threads in a while, but I sort of feel compelled to reply to Zero Day’s above post. No, I refuse to quote the thing it’s too darn long

If you are only playing to win, you have no reason to care about balance. At all. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course, and though I can’t entirely understand what pleasure you get from it I don’t think there is anything wrong with playing solely to win.
But really, there is no logical reason to care about balance when you will simply switch to whatever build is best anyway, because the game gives you whatever you want just for playing it however you want. It’s not like WoW where the top gear takes several years to get for people that sleep, because even I with my job and my college classes can manage to have some ascended gear (and I would have more if I didn’t spend even more time not playing video games).
So really, why do you care if (x) gets a nerf?
You won’t stop winning, you’ll just switch builds to whatever happens to be better and keep winning regardless unless someday the game actually becomes entirely balanced and there isn’t anything that really gives a concrete advantage anymore (it’s a pipe dream, I know, but it’s also the only situation where you would actually not just pick the next most powerful thing after a nerf).

I just see no reason for someone who cares solely about winning to worry about balance except to take advantage of a lack of it.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Rangers are the ones who should have a large set of anti-stealth mechanics.
Thiefs => Stealthed Assassins
Rangers => Tracker

But rock paper scissors balance isn’t any fun

1) Drop the glyph CDR, you shouldn’t need it for the most part on your heal and it’s especially inefficient to have it for a single skill.
2) Try to get rid of the soldiers eventually in favor of valk/cav/zerk because frankly it’s not worth the damage loss.
3) I would swap out a cantrip for arcane wave for damage+might because you only have one blast in your build and you have too many cantrips for PvE already. I survive fine in full zerker with a whopping zero cantrips. On the same note, you don’t really need the cantrip traits if you time dodges.
4) Blasting staff doesn’t really help in PvE.
5) As ThiBash said, ice bow is very nice, especially against large enemies because they take more hits. Even if you don’t have it always on, it’s usually a good idea to equip it before a boss fight/large object fight. It also has the best stun in the game combined with a chill, so if you can manage to time the 5 you will be making the best use of the one stun before defiant comes up again. Even if you mess it up it still applies the chill, so that’s nice.

MiLkZz.4789:

Uhtameit.2413:

Oookay, so :

1) I contradicted this guy because he said you could faceroll with mesmer, which is a joke

2) Warriors are amazing these days, even against good players

3) Elementalists are decent (teribad if focused) in small fights, and teribad at team fights. You don’t get why people complain about ele because you don’t play sPvP.

4) Necros power build are strong, aye. Their condi build is getting nerfed though. With rune of balthazar it might turn out to be okay but they won’t be even better (except WvW where necro with rune of perplexity will be a thing).

5) Power rangers suck.

Mesmer sucks in sPvP, grant you that. They are beasts in WvW tho. Definitely the hybrid ones. PU is irritating aswel, they might not kill you but you wont kill them either.

I don’t know what you consider good, but there is quite a long list of counters to warriors these days and I don’t recall losing to a warrior recently. Dodge their abilities and they can’t place their damage.

I indeed don’t play sPvP, I did do a few tournements with my guild. But I hate the lack of build diversity and when you find me in sPvP it is for duels. Elementalist is strong in WvW for their great support (waterfields) and aoe pressure (meteorshower). They are really strong in 1vs1s but I only know 2 elementalists who can win most fights. A small roaming group of elementalists can take down way bigger groups in WvW aswel. But ye, they underperform somewhat in sPvP.

Condi necro is getting nerfed (deserved) and they’ll still be strong in PvP, but in WvW with the +40% condi food they will be OP. I think they are pretty fine in PvP actually.

Agreed.

Honestly, 1v1 is not a gamemode. It has little to no bearing on the actual game becasue things that are horrible in actual gameplay as a team or even in consecutive fights are terribly overpowered (or vice versa in the case of stealth/thieves, which are much less powerful when they don’t have the advantage of guaranteed surprise) in a 1v1 that only happens when both parties are ready.
Despite this, you still get people claiming that superburst ele is a good spec because it wins 1v1s in ideal situations, or that thieves are okay because you can duel them in obsidian sanctum (not saying that thieves are OP, but 1v1ing a thief in an arranged 1v1 ignores half of what thieves are good for), despite the fact that starting a fight with all of your 40+ second cooldowns isn’t realistic for a start.
More reason 1v1s aren’t a good representation of class balance:
-No surprises, and especially no inherent advantage to classes that are good at surprising people.
-No focusing from teamfights.
-There are only two real viable spec types: those that can burst someone down near instantly, and those that can outlast a burst (through either invulnerability or avoiding it through stealth etc.) and still kill the other guy.
-AoE is about half as useful as it is in the actual game.
-Forced to stay in combat in cases where disengaging to avoid death would be a better option.
-Stalling specs don’t win 1v1s, so bunkers are pretty much off the table, as are supports.
-You get to pick your opponent. No sane burst spec would really pick a condi warrior or necro as an opponent, in any actual gamemode you don’t have that choice.
-Vastly lower awareness and sustain requirements: In a 1v1, you don’t have to worry about that thief sneaking up on you, so you’re not constantly spending time looking for someone stealthing behind you or saving long cooldowns so that you aren’t bent over the table by the next person you have to fight. You can also use your full concentration on a single player.
-Revive metas don’t exist, because stomping in a 1v1 is bad manners.

Sorry for the off-topic rant, but I really want people to stop thinking about 1v1s as an actual measure of balance.

If you pick up ele you will probably get your kitten handed to you on a platter for a while, because it requires tons of practice to be anything other than a buffbot, and you will have a hard time against warriors starting out regardless of class choice (unless you take a warrior of course), and rangers are pretty mediocre everywhere when they aren’t autoattacking in PvP with spirits. Other than that, balance is pretty good in PvP/WvW, in PvE you just can’t take a necro or engi in speed runs.

Currently, though my opinion on condis changes every five minutes, the only thing that really bothers me is that you don’t so much outplay them as outbuild them.

I don’t find that to be an engaging challenge.

It’s funny, because ele’s most viable build (huge burst) is essentially a warrior troll build.
Anybody see the killshot builds, that basically do ele burst but in a single projectile that can be used once every 10ish seconds?
Takes a bit longer if you are noticed and is a bit less damage, but it’s all one hit and happens every few seconds as opposed to once a minute, on a super tanky class.

cheese.4739:

Be more realistic – it’ll be while under 30%. Maybe under 20%.

Then we’ll get every zerker player complaining that it’s OP, while nobody else even realizes it exists, and every ele will want it removed for something useful.

Because life in general needs to mimic Diamond Skin.

elprimo.4398:

With that stone heart. I might be over hyping it but usually when running staff you get a bunch of zerkers trying to dive you. Best of case now you can actually survive until help comes your way.

It’s just the sheer number of things that no longer work:
Precision
Crit damage
On-crit traits
Crit sigils
Any guaranteed crit
Fury

I’m so excited.
Wait for it to be over 90% health so that nobody is happy.

Frankly, using autos in PvP or WvW as a d/d ele isn’t particularly practical, and if you’re forced into using them because you ran out of attunements that just means you need more practice. When I see an enemy ele switch to lightning and try to whip me, I know I can 1v1 them with no problem even on my staff, because there’s pretty much always something better to do with your time (like use any skill that isn’t an auto haha).
In PvE, where damage is the only thing that matters, I can see this being a problem.

I can’t even remember the last time I cast vapor blade or impale, and I d/d moderately often.

I’m personally going to make the weirdest possible build and then learn it well enough to steamroll with it.
Zerker gear, 30 (either persisting or blinding)/0/30(stone heart ofc)/0/10(renewing stamina or arcane cd reduction)
Probably energy sigil+battle and maybe divine runes, will have to see new runes though.

Switch to earth on incoming burst and turn everyone’s zerker dps into soldiers. It will be hilarious.

cheese.4739:

Your trooling abilities are subpar, oZii.

You do have to give him credit for the number of people he got though.

I’m pretty sure the casting animation is normal, it’s just that the skill is so slow you can practically outrun it. It might have a significant aftercast as well, and I hate those.
As it stands now, it’s just one of the fifty things I throw behind me while running away, and probably less effective than lava font at helping me escape/gap create.

Heh, almost a successful bait until I saw who posted it.
Try harder, subtlety is your friend.

Apparition.1576:

This is a Warrior we are talking about… warriors need mobility. Otherwise they could just be kited into oblivion. That was part of the class design. Greatsword warriors have nothing but mobility, but mobility counts for exactly what in pvp? Sword + warhorn is the most mobile spec warriors have, except that they can kitten near immune to conditions. So at the cost of damage they have much better sustain.

But why should a Greatsword warrior be forced to use axe or hammer for damage. Greatsword has no sustain, horrible damage, at the cost of mobility thats part of the class design?

Greatsword received way to many nerfs, and no compensation before the condition meta.

Should thief or mesmer have their damaged nerfed to kitten as well?.. Mesmers have clones, stealth and mobility. How is a greatsword warrior supposed to compete?

Everyone’s favorite phrase:
L2Pn00b
But seriously, it’s a utility weapon in PvP, not a damage one. It’s got tons of mobility, an evade, a ranged cripple and a zoning tool (that’s all hundred blades is good for in pvp). Use it for what it’s great at, don’t try to make it better at things you have other weapons for. It certainly doesn’t need any buffs.

GoodWithGravy.8019:

Is level up affected by the AoE cap? Anti blob upscaled meta go!

Oh god this would be great!
Test it please someone, get a guild of upscales, get them close to levelling, then run into zerg.
I want it to work so badly.

At this point I have to say it would be fair to ignore hooma. He is either trolling or has trouble with English to the point that he actually doesn’t understand that there will be changes to sigils.
I’m personally inclined to go with the second because:

“Lol sure, let’s just read every third word.

I wonder how you will have only one sigil after the patch.

There is no difference from before. It seems you don’t understand. If you think that the number of sigils you can slot is important and the number of skills you have isn’t, then you might be playing the wrong class"

Hooma also seems to think that elementalists are overpowered.
I’m just going to have to leave that there.

The sigil change is a slight buff to every class, which is a lesser buff for ele and engi, and a slightly bigger buff to warriors, simply because they are removing the shared cooldown for on-swap sigils. The nerf on killstack sigils affects ele and engi more than anyone else because they use half of their sigils instead of one of four.
If you’re too stupid to understand that, it’s your own fault and you should stop posting in this thread.
The only arguments against compensating ele and engi in some way for this change are that the change is either not significant enough to merit compensation, or that other classes need to be buffed past ele and engi. I think Burnfall is the only person on this entire forum that thinks that other classes need to be buffed past ele further.

a t s e.9614:

Mouby.7096:

a t s e.9614:

So your only argument to say that warriors are good in duels is Hambow. Sadly hambow is not balanced and will get nerfed what is left is terrible specs. The only way to win is pop all stances and hopefully your burst will land without getting blinded or without your enemy porting away. Not to mention that poison literaly makes Healing sig useless.

A warrior is like a PvE mob, hits slowly, hits hard,Has alot of HP, thats about it

“The only way to win”….wait what? I thought we’re talking about warriors? So you think it’ll help to blind or poison a warrior who pops all of his stances…..aright, i don’t know if you’ve ever heard of berzerkers stance. Maybe you just don’t know the fact that blindness and poison are actually “conditions”?

Even without berzerker stance a warrior can use Lyssa and/or remove up to 3 conditions every 7 seconds!

Warriors are bad in duels….

Are you kidding me?

Yea that’s what I’m saying you must pop all stances to land your burst. Which part you don’t understand? Without stances a warrior is a free kill unless you go full condition cheese. And to remove those conditions you need to land your burst, good luck with that unless you’re using longbow.

Warrior works well against bads , everybody knows what. Exactly like a mob in PvE, if you fail to dodge it will nearly one shot you but dodging is very easy due to hugely telegraphed attacks.

I’m pretty sure warriors are never a free kill. Even on my mesmer (though I do refuse to run PU because it disgusts me) I still have to at least be thoughtful and time my skills well even if the warrior plays like an infant, which oddly enough quite a few of them do. For all they seem to yell about the dodge key, quite a few of them forget its existence entirely. It’s almost like they want to be able to facetank all damage and still win. Not to mention that you do have plenty of active defenses if you use them.

I’m gonna agree with focus for ele, the playstyle it encourages (hovering over two attunements with long CD skills because your others are terrible) has been proven to have terrible effects on your healthbar.

I just don’t want to be playing rock paper scissors (lizard spock) as other people have described it.
When I feel a strong need to only worry about team comp because literally everything consists of hard counters and is thus a glorified overcomplicated version of the aforementioned game, I go play pokemon (and I do, there’s nothing wrong with some good pokemon).
I don’t think it’s as obvious that removing the vast majority of complexity from PvP is an amazing idea as you make it out to be, and I’m not even talking about builds here. There is a certain degree of expectancy in the game right now for players to be able to enter a fight and win, not because they happened to be the right class at the right time or through pure strategy, but because they’re actually better than the other people at playing the game, and your suggestion makes that much harder.
For example, as a staff ele with a horribly nontraditional build, I can 1v1 meta thieves. Sure it happens once a century, and I’m disadvantaged beyond what I would like, but at the same time I can be reasonably certain that if I found some magical way for me to practice having a thief attempt to surprise me (because let’s be honest here, 1v1ing a thief on a dueling server ignored half of why thieves are useful) I would eventually get to the point where I could catch thieves trying to murder me and reverse the situation much more reliably. Reducing everything to hardcounters removes that kind of skill, and doesn’t particularly appeal to me.

FrownyClown.8402:

support ele that does 6-7k fire grabs.

Exactly, I build so that my support is more incidental than the focus of my build.
That’s part of why I like staff so much, because my buffs and heals to myself are AoE without any investment on my part past just getting blasts and positioning my AoEs so that I can help everyone. I can then have the fun of raining fire down upon my enemies while my allies meatshield for me
Even with d/d aurashare, which sounds very support-y, you’re still only actually putting one trait explicitly to helping allies, and the rest are mostly for your own benefit and just happen to provide support.

FrownyClown.8402:

Dagger/dagger aura share builds are great if you are running power. A necro with boons is very strong.

Scepter/dagger doesn’t have much support utility, but it is good for bursting opponents. It is more of a selfish type of play.

The main thing you want to do is compliment the weaknesses of the necro, mesmer or warrior. The necro is lack of boons, the mesmer is lack of swiftness and condition clears and the warrior is just face roll lol.

As you said, d/d aurashare is probably one of the top small group specs for ele (0/10/10/30/20 is what I would do to maximise my auras and boon output).
Other than that, staff always works if you’re trying to cover friendly weaknesses, because everyone can use that kind of support (especially if you add extra blasts via Evasive Arcana and Arcane Wave), and since you seem to be running with two potentially heavy control types staff damage will be much more effective.

Nabuko Darayon.9645:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Nabuko Darayon.9645:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

ThiBash.5634:

Nabuko Darayon.9645:

The issue ele has it can’t change to a better Weapon in combat. Other professions have option to bring range and main weapon.

Staff gets better near melee range. Just because it has 1200 range doesn’t mean it’s not usable in melee.

In fact, I personally mostly use staff within 900-300 range. It gives me more buffs from my blasts, lets me roll over people with fire 4, and especially ensures that certain attacks (air 3 and earth 5 mostly, some AoE on melee classes) always get some effect.
I do range on occasion, but that is only if I am supporting someone on a capture point or I can’t be reached, or someone is trying to get me with a projectile weapon and I can just hit earth 3, spam autoattacks, and laugh.

Issue I have with the Staff projectiles even in melee range is that they don’t respond when when opponent is cycling around you (for example a thief with Heartseeker, but any). It might be my lack of knowledge in how to deal with these type of opponents but even in PvE when the mobs get to close range and start going sideways there’s like an “aftercast effect” where you would turn around and cast, and if the opponent constantly keeps cycling you you’re losing precious seconds and Lava Font just doesn’t do it.
I dunno. Got any advice?

Go to fire element (for the AoE which makes this much easier), deselect target, and aim while spamming 1.
I keep my autotarget off for a number of reasons, and left my “nearest target” button unlocked for a while in order to train myself to aim projectiles without targeting (if you guide your screen with your right mouse button you automatically shoot there if you didn’t know). I only let the computer target my autos for me if I’m doing more important things, like switching attunements or aiming other spells, or if the person in question doesn’t realize that zigzags destroy all targeting.
If all else fails and you are in melee range, aim at the ground (or their feet) and spam 1. If you have blasting staff, which I really like for PvP, you shouldn’t have too much trouble hitting.

Nice idea. I gotta try this out. I always thought autotargeting would save me some “mistakes” just to find it actually caused more.

Fireball just happens to be nice and easy to hit with. The rest are only useful to be untargeted with if you’re in PvE against a stationary target and have forgotten what your target select key is (shut up, it happens).

Dodge through people, more effective anyway and removes all other problems.

Good movie!
Oh, attunement not element

Relentless.7023:

“Skill with the class” is a WvW and PvE thing. Skill with the best possible builds, as Chaith described, is what is going on at the top of the game anyway.

Why give people the illusion of choice in the matter? There isn’t any choice. It’s either best builds and best teamwork / timing, or you get beat. Period.

I would propose preset PvP builds that people can stray from if they wish if I thought people were struggling too much with finding a build upon coming to PvP, though honestly anyone could just google it (bing if you are the spawn of Satan) and find the top three builds for their class in all of twenty seconds.
I would not take every class and force them into builds that hard-counter each other.

Relentless.7023:

Duelists would be able to kick anybody’s kitten 1v1.

Assassins would just be able to either catch you off guard if you’re new or lagging, or seal the deal if you’re already in a fight with another Duelist. They wouldn’t be able to gank Duelists by design, only the best of the best would be able to.

Same deal either way. Very little is left up to skill with the class, and the vast majority of what makes wins leans towards tactics, which would be fine if other games didn’t already have such a massive head start in that area. As much as I love MOBAs, I don’t really want this game to turn into one.

Relentless.7023:

Appearances are reality though. When you log in for the very first time, what you see is a massive pile of information that doesn’t really make sense until either someone walks you through it or you play long enough, and get beat up long enough, to figure things out.

On top of that, quite a few people expect there to be more competitive builds than there are. This is what happens when you give them too many options – they expect it to be all socialist where you can bring whatever build you want and it will work well enough to win.

Take PU Mesmer for example. It’s a terrible build for Conquest, but people still run it because it can kill people pretty well. They complain that this build should be viable, but do not consider how useless stealth is for point fighting and how a Warrior or Ranger do it better overall. The option is there, they take it even though it’s just a Volvo, not a Lamborghini.

Every competitive game is going to have a hierarchy, and what I’m suggesting is to do away with all the useless junk that doesn’t make it into competitive play in favor of a system that gives everyone a Lamborghini instead of having to build one and risk bringing a Pinto.

That way your time playing this game isn’t spend wondering if your build is optimal enough, but whether or not you are in fact driving the Lamborghini better than the other guys.

It’s keeping it simple.

I agree that build vs. build is boring gameplay and should be avoided. I disagree that the logical conclusion is to then turn everything in PvP into hard counters, because I find that just as boring and consider it to be the opposite extreme of where I would go. While overall strategy and teamwork should be probably the most important thing, it shouldn’t be the only important thing.
I would vastly prefer a situation where if someone tries to kill me I can turn it around if I happen to be better than them (and conversely if I try to beat on someone who proceeds to outplay the heck out of me I lose) to one where if I am a duelist and I get spotted by an assassin I might as well just take my hands off the controls if I don’t have a friend nearby.

Nabuko Darayon.9645:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

ThiBash.5634:

Nabuko Darayon.9645:

The issue ele has it can’t change to a better Weapon in combat. Other professions have option to bring range and main weapon.

Staff gets better near melee range. Just because it has 1200 range doesn’t mean it’s not usable in melee.

In fact, I personally mostly use staff within 900-300 range. It gives me more buffs from my blasts, lets me roll over people with fire 4, and especially ensures that certain attacks (air 3 and earth 5 mostly, some AoE on melee classes) always get some effect.
I do range on occasion, but that is only if I am supporting someone on a capture point or I can’t be reached, or someone is trying to get me with a projectile weapon and I can just hit earth 3, spam autoattacks, and laugh.

Issue I have with the Staff projectiles even in melee range is that they don’t respond when when opponent is cycling around you (for example a thief with Heartseeker, but any). It might be my lack of knowledge in how to deal with these type of opponents but even in PvE when the mobs get to close range and start going sideways there’s like an “aftercast effect” where you would turn around and cast, and if the opponent constantly keeps cycling you you’re losing precious seconds and Lava Font just doesn’t do it.
I dunno. Got any advice?

Go to fire element (for the AoE which makes this much easier), deselect target, and aim while spamming 1.
I keep my autotarget off for a number of reasons, and left my “nearest target” button unlocked for a while in order to train myself to aim projectiles without targeting (if you guide your screen with your right mouse button you automatically shoot there if you didn’t know). I only let the computer target my autos for me if I’m doing more important things, like switching attunements or aiming other spells, or if the person in question doesn’t realize that zigzags destroy all targeting.
If all else fails and you are in melee range, aim at the ground (or their feet) and spam 1. If you have blasting staff, which I really like for PvP, you shouldn’t have too much trouble hitting.

ThiBash.5634:

Nabuko Darayon.9645:

The issue ele has it can’t change to a better Weapon in combat. Other professions have option to bring range and main weapon.

Staff gets better near melee range. Just because it has 1200 range doesn’t mean it’s not usable in melee.

In fact, I personally mostly use staff within 900-300 range. It gives me more buffs from my blasts, lets me roll over people with fire 4, and especially ensures that certain attacks (air 3 and earth 5 mostly, some AoE on melee classes) always get some effect.
I do range on occasion, but that is only if I am supporting someone on a capture point or I can’t be reached, or someone is trying to get me with a projectile weapon and I can just hit earth 3, spam autoattacks, and laugh.

Kyon.9735:

I think this would be great for staff especially zergers.

Just for earth 4. Interrupt the whole zerg repeatedly.

This might be the only thing to ever prompt an ele to take earth shield for the two extra interrupts on acceptable cooldowns, because otherwise there just simply aren’t enough interrupts on the class to justify taking the trait over fresh air or tempest defense.
Or maybe not because of how painful using earth shield is.

ShakeyStorm.7180:

OMG Just saw how AWESOME Guardian is on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibP7ovlhMLE . Cannot imagine a Warrior jumping in a mob of 20+ players eating up all the conditions being thrown at him and still come out with half a life. On top of that, he stopped for a while in the middle of the battle with his tome for a few seconds. Look it up and see if your game play as Guardian is as good as he was. Maybe the devs are right. Guardian is in a good spot right now. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibP7ovlhMLE

Congratulations, you have found someone who can showcase their best moments for all to see while leaving out every instance of failure.
Welcome to the internet, I will be your guide today.
Showing a video with an organized group roflstomping a zerg of disorganized, underlevelled/undergeared newbies is not generally the most convincing argument.
I’m sure I could compile videos of all the times I crushed someone horribly on my 30/10/0/0/30 arcane/conjure zerker staff ele, but that by no stretch of the imagination makes that build powerful.

ShakeyStorm.7180:

Instead of wanting to weaken Warriro mobilitiy and making GW2 boring because of all the nerf whining, why don’t you ask ANet to improve other classes instead? Veteran players can play with new builds and classes, potential new players can see that the game is improving instead of degrading, and additional revenue for ANet because people are not leaving and possibly promoting GW2.

Win-win for all right?

Ehh, one point I’ll disagree with you on.
Globally raising power level is not a sign of improvement by any measure. What people are talking about when they say power creep is the effect that doing so has on the game as a whole.
Making PvE easier is obviously the biggest concern, but there are other things, like buffed skills interacting in unforeseen ways that cause additional imbalance instead of fixing any balancing problems, or a constant process of raising everything in increments because something else was accidentally made too strong.

killahmayne.9518:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

killahmayne.9518:

jihm.2315:

killahmayne.9518:

I don’t understand at all how a nerf to critical damage is a buff to healing signet at all, when all other classes’ heals are not affected at all.

because healing signet is superior to any other heal in the game

Which doesn’t mean it actually got buffed with the new ferocity change, more so in relation to other heals.

It’s more about the increased unlikelyness of being able to outpace warrior passive regen, because there simply isn’t very much you can do about it.
After the patch, it will be slightly harder for non-zerkers to deal more damage than warriors can passively heal. This isn’t as much of an issue on other classes because there are more ways to prevent heals (interrupts, well-timed poisons instead of having to permapoison).
I don’t really think it’s that much of an issue, because the ferocity change won’t affect PvP and WvWvW balance is nonexistent anyway.

Unless you go a conditions which seem to be unchanged in this next coming patch.

Yeah, but conditions are already pretty obnoxious. I’m more referring to the people who don’t go full on zerker or full on cleric, but try to get some survivability while still getting damage (not me, I go full direct damage 24/7). Those are the ones who will have a harder time with passive sustain after the patch, and will either have to spec further into damage as a result or just not face warriors.
Again, not something that affects me personally, but definitely something I could see being an issue.

This thread is just gross, on both sides of the issue.
Several facts:
1) Dire is worse DPS than soldiers by a significant amount, and this is indisputable.
2) However, one hit from a condition attack will generally do more total damage than an equivalent power attack (as a method of compensation for the time period that damage happens over as well as the increase in mitigation).
3) Conditions in general tend to be harder to avoid, either because of passive crit procs (can’t dodge those) or because ranged conditions tend to be less avoidable than their physical counterparts (excluding hybrids, as those aren’t quite relevant and tend to be extremely telegraphed)- compare ele fire staff #3 to #2.

The final reason is why conditions are so prevalent in small-scale pvp, in that while conditions hit less hard, they are far more reliable which makes them a very solid choice.

silentnight warrior.2714:

Chuck Zitto.2367:

Stone Heart: Immune to crits.

Your move.

Immune to crits while in a useless attunment awesome.
Warrior= 100% crit chance on burst skills such as eviscerate killshot earthshaker and combustive shot. Now the warrior doesn’t even have to put points into precision and can spend them elsewhere lol.

And Stone Heart can nulify the warrior trait anytime. And its is a big counter to the initial thief burst. That trait is great.

It’s great, but elementalists will never be as tanky as warriors if only because of the necessity to eventually switch out of earth if you want to do something other than die slowly.

runeblade.7514:

Supreme tankiness + supreme mobility.

What can go wrong?

Oh yeah, I forgot that the minimum health and armor class is tankier and more mobile than the highest health and armor class that also has massively better heals with less investment.
Of course, the latter is your main so I wouldn’t expect you to actually take a look at it objectively.

Rednik.3809:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Okay, fine,you’re entirely right. Warriors absolutely need buffs to their condition removal, especially since mesmers have a comparable adept tier trait that needs to be about half as good as the warrior one. And warriors are completely pidgeonholed into defense. I mean seriously, having to spend a whole 20 trait points to have awesome condition removal is way too much, they need to get that for ten points in a offense-oriented tree.

So trading HPS for condition removal and giving breathing space for specs other than eternal hambow is bad thing for you? Oh wow.

So what you’re saying is that in order to have breathing room for specs other than hambow, you need to have a trait that is exactly twice as effective as the same trait on another class?
Besides, warrior is already the number one class in terms of the number of viable specs it possesses. I sincerely doubt that extra, more easily accessible condition removal and a cooldown reduction on heals is needed to give space for alternative specs to hambow, seeing as those specs already exist and are pretty common.
Sure you could make a case for the other heals on warrior being underpowered, but trying to make a adept trait remove four conditions on heal seems like overdoing it by quite a bit considering how far any other class would have to go to get that kind of removal.